


Four Chambers

by ScooterSister



Series: Delight In Dystopia [1]
Category: Grand Theft Auto V
Genre: Angst and Humor, Divorce, Dysfunctional Family, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/F, F/M, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Hate to Love, Infidelity, Kidnapping, Love, Love/Hate, Mobsters, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-24
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-02-26 20:23:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 45,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2665172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScooterSister/pseuds/ScooterSister
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louise Bisby is trying to pick up the pieces of her life in the wake of her bitter separation and impending divorce from her movie director husband, who has recently disappeared himself. Suddenly, her life is turned upside down when she is kidnapped/enlisted to help our favorite career criminals find him to appease an assembly of mobsters and industry people. An already-messy situation becomes even more confusing when she befriends the criminals and develops a mutually-felt fascination with Trevor Philips.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Laid up with a broken ankle with a lot of time on my hands, I cranked out 7ish chapters of another Trevor x OC fanfic. I hope that it is enjoyed by all. I really appreciate comments. This might be headed into series category if it starts getting too long. Oh, and another thing for those of you that read the last one...Where Meadow was my Billy Badass, Louise is my Charlie Brown and I hope that you come to love her as I have. More over, I hope you fine folks lurking around this fandom enjoy it ;)  
> *I do not own any of the Grand Theft Auto V characters. They belong to Rockstar.

Louise Bisby néeVerland, (soon-to-be Louise Verland _again_ ) packed the rest of her desk clutter into a milk crate before she took a last look around the art room at Elysian Alternative School, making sure that she had gathered every piece of student artwork that she had been gifted that school year. It was painful to leave another year behind, at least for her it was. She had only been there for the last two years, but it was still bittersweet as she hadn't yet become jaded like some of her colleagues. The school was plopped in an industrial part of the city so that these kids wouldn't offend the delicate sensibilities of the average L.S. citizen and she found that too cruel to have become jaded by her charges.

And becoming jaded was easy business when you worked with wayward youth who couldn't hack it in conventional school. Many of them were noisy and uncouth. She had been called a “bitch” or “puta” more times than she could count, but even so, she loved her kids and delighted in being their art instructor. And mostly, they loved her back. It was pretty cushy being the twenty-seven-year-old art teacher as those status characteristics made it easy for her to curry the kids' favor. She carried a cardboard portfolio full of student art under one arm while she occupied the other with the milk crate. She flicked the light off with her elbow and headed out the door. She was the last person there save for a custodial worker.

The sun was just beginning to set over Los Santos when she emerged from the adobe school building and headed toward the faculty parking lot on the east side. She was struggling a little bit to keep the portfolio from slipping out from under her arm. It had no handle and it was too big to clutch with her hand. She continued to struggle with it as she rounded the corner into the parking lot.

Suddenly, she felt her foot come into contact with some unseen obstacle just before she began to fall. She was able to get her feet under her in the nick of time without falling onto her hands and knees (or getting a face full of asphalt), but the blunder had cost some casualties. The pavement was now littered with her sundry desk items and a dozen or so student paintings.

She turned to see what she had stumbled on and she could have kicked herself when she saw that it was that stupid abandoned parking block for a spot that didn't even exist anymore. _Why didn't someone move that thing._ She walked by it twice a day, every day, but of course she had to forget that it was there on the one day that she had arms full of stuff.

She looked over to her light blue Glendale parked ten yards away, the lone car in the lot. She considered pulling it over to where her stuff was on the pavement and just shoveling everything in, but she quickly put down the thought as lazy and pathetic and set about returning her things to their carriers.

Once she had returned the student art to the portfolio, she set about throwing her pencil cases and bag balms and sticky notes back into the milk crate, stopping only to tuck her black, shoulder-length hair behind her ear and admire another one of the gifts a student had given her.

It was a bracelet made of blown glass beads, secured in a plastic bag. She had fought like hell to get the administration to let her take the kids off campus to a glass studio. The product was well worth the battle, plus the kids had loved it. She placed it gingerly back into the crate.

The last thing that she picked up was a picture frame. She turned it over. The glass in the frame had shattered, creating a spider-web effect over the faces of herself and her husband. _Estranged husband._ The picture showed them holding hands in front of a lighthouse, wind-whipped and smiling. She hadn't even remembered packing it in the first place. _Weird._

She gave some thought to throwing it in the garbage or leaving it there, but she didn't want to risk a custodial worker finding it. She didn't work _with_ them, but she worked _near_ them. She didn't want them shooting her pitiful glances at the end of each day come the fall. She'd gotten plenty of that from her friends and colleagues over the past several months. She tossed it back into the crate.

She picked everything up again and headed toward her car, shuffling her feet the whole way so as to avoid another tumble. She set the portfolio on top of the car and unlocked the door before popping the trunk. She placed the items inside, shut the trunk door, and turned around, abruptly colliding with a large, solid figure that hovered over her. A human figure.

She barely had time to gasp before the man pulled something over her head, something dark, and encircled her upper body with his arms. She immediately went into panic mode and began writhing and struggling against his grasp.

“Get off of me!” she screamed. “Stop!”

Suddenly, she heard the lull of a car engine pulling up beside them. A good Samaritan, perhaps? She should be so lucky.

“Get in,” she heard a male voice tell her assailant.

She continued to struggle and she could feel warm metal against her skin, the side of the car, which she struggled to push away from. She couldn't see, otherwise she would have used her legs as leverage. Instead, she took the opportunity to knee her attacker in the stomach, eliciting a pained grunt. It didn't give her the window of time she had hoped for to run away, though. He quickly got control of her.

“Easy, sweetheart,” came the voice of her assailant. “Play it cool and you won't get hurt,” he said, his voice straining from the blow to the stomach.

She felt herself being tossed into the car, onto the leather upholstered seat before someone scooted in beside her and shut the car door.

“Hurry it up, F. Let's get the hell out of here before someone sees,” came the same voice.

The man pulled her up by her shoulders. She struggled against him, but he was strong and he was able to wrestle her arms behind her back before he quickly and skillfully secured her wrists together with something tight and rigid. He sat her up.

With her arms behind her back, she lifted both of her legs to kick at him, but he grabbed those, too, pulling them together and into his body.

“Listen, honey, I told you...If you chill out, you'll be fine.”

Louise could feel her heart beating in her ears, her breathing erratic and labored.

“Let me go, you fucking psychopath!” she shouted in between breaths.

He grabbed her around her upper body with both arms. She instinctively head-butted him somewhere on his face.

“Ah, fuck!” he cried out in pain, letting her go.

“Yo, Mike, everything okay back there?” came a voice from the front seat.

This Mike guy was panting as heavily as she was now, struggling to steady her with one hand.

“Yeah, Frank, it's cool. We've got a little firecracker on our hands, though. Our guy wasn't wrong about her.”

They were on the freeway now, Louise could feel it. She hadn't paid mind to which direction the car turned, though so she didn't know which direction they were headed in.

“Well shit, man, she's scared. Can't blame her. Take that hood off her head so she ain't so disoriented.”

“I'm afraid if I do she'll shoot lasers out of her eyes at me or somethin',” the man quipped.

“It's adrenaline, man! She's scared, now take the fuckin' hood off her!”

“I agree, Michael,” came another voice from the front, more nasally and soft. “I'm none to keen on watching you do your dirty work, so maybe you can dispense with the terror element?”

“Lester, I'm sorry, but we need you with us in Chumash in case something goes down between tonight and tomorrow. We might get a hit our target and we'll need you at the ready. I'll put you on a bus back to L.S. bright and early tomorrow.”

_Why the hell was he apologizing to him? He should have been apologizing to Louise for terrorizing her. And why were they taking her to fucking Chumash?_

The man at her side addressed Louise now, still winded.

“Listen, kid. I said I ain't gonna hurt you, okay? Now I'm gonna take the hood off so you can see, but you gotta promise me you're not going to rip my jugular out with your teeth, you got it?”

Louise sat frozen for a minute. The stillness made the darkness worse somehow, so, without thinking, she quickly nodded her head.

“Okay,” this Michael said before he pulled the hood off of her head.

The short time that it had been on her head had been enough to make her photophobic but at least she wasn't disoriented anymore. Or not _as_ disoriented.

She sat frozen for a minute. She could see the man out of her periphery. He had dark hair, she could see that. She looked to the driver, a young black man that looked to be around her age. The front passenger seat was occupied by a balding man with a few whisps of blonde hair atop his head, but she couldn't see anymore of his features. Slowly, she turned her head to look at the man that had accosted her.

The first thing she noticed was that he had piercing blue eyes that bore right into her. He was obviously angry, but thankfully, he seemed to be suppressing that anger some. She saw that she had split his bottom lip when she had head-butted him and immediately regretted acting on that impulse. She could feel herself quivering now with the onset of sudden, terrifying thoughts about what these men might have in store for her.

Her mind flashed on the stories about those crazy people in the mountains that walked around naked and snatched hikers to feast on their flesh. She had heard that they had been massacred, but there were rumors that some of them had escaped and were still lurking around these parts. These men didn't seem to fit the profile, but who knows? Maybe the elderly cultists had needed to branch out to replenish their membership base?

“What are you going to do with me?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

The man's eyes softened before he averted his gaze a moment.

“Look,” he said, looking at her again.“You and I have a mutual friend and that mutual friend requested that we come and get you so that you and him could have a little chat. He knew that you wouldn't come quietly, so we had to do it this way. I'm sorry for that, really I am.”

 _Mutual friend?_ Louise was quite certain that she was not friendly with anyone who would request that she be kidnapped and thrown into a strange car and then taken to _Chumash._ She kept company with relatively law-abiding folks. She shook her head at the man.

“No, no. I think this is a mistake,” she said fearfully. “You have the wrong person. If you let me go, I promise I won't tell anyone about this, I swear. _Please-”_

“No, kid, you're definitely the one we're looking for. Five-foot-three, one twenty five, black hair, late twenties, teaches art class at Elysian Alternative School. I did my homework. You're the youngest faculty member at that school by a decade.”

Louise was utterly confused now. He wasn't wrong, the colleague closest to her in age was a thirty-eight-year-old swim coach and civics instructor. _Who did she know that would orchestrate something like this?_

Louise sat silently for the duration of the car ride. The conversation between the three men didn't lend her any clues as to who they were or why they had taken her. Finally, they pulled into a motel parking lot in Chumash.

“He's waiting for us in one-nineteen. Go on in there and let him know we're here. Lester, you get set up on the computer. We need to get her in there without anyone seeing,” he said. Franklin obliged him wordlessly. Louise watched as he walked to room one-nineteen and opened the door, disappearing inside. He was followed closely by the passenger, Lester, who she now saw walked with a cane. Michael turned to her. “Now, you and I are going to go into that room, okay? And you're not going to scream or make a scene in this parking lot. Things are going to start to make sense in a minute, but I need for you to cooperate.”

Louise stared at him for a minute. Then she nodded her head, trying to hide her trepidation.

Michael got out of the car before walking over to her side and opening the door. He pulled his jacket off before reaching his hand into the car. Of course, she couldn't take his hand as hers were tied behind her back, so she stepped out. He abruptly covered her shoulders with the jacket in order to conceal her bound hands and shifted his gaze around the parking lot. He placed his hand on her back and led her toward the motel room with the door slightly ajar. They pushed into the room and there she immediately saw him, waiting in a chair. A face that she hadn't seen in the better part of two years. He stood up to greet her.

“Sugar smacks!” the old man crooned as he strode over to her with open arms. When he reached her, he took her shoulders in his hands and pulled her face to his, planting a kiss on her cheek. He pulled back and his face fell. “What's the matter, doll?” he asked. She just stared at him for a moment, astonished.

“Solomon?” she said. “Did _you_ do this?”

 

 

“Look at you, you're a bombshell, I would'a put you in pictures, but no, you wanted to help the poor little juvenile gang bangers...” Solomon put his hands on his face in mock-pity, conjuring Edward Munch's _The Scream._

Solomon stood in front of Louise, who was sitting in a chair with her hands tied behind her back. Michael, Franklin, and Lester occupied various other corners of the little motel room in Chumash. The room was sparsely decorated, save for some standard motel art and decorative lamps. The vertical blinds were pulled shut. The three men kept their heads down while they waited out the conversation unfolding right in front of them.

 _“At-risk youth,_ Sol. Not gang bangers. And God, would you give it a rest with the fucking flattery? Quit trying to placate me, you know that pisses me off. Now, tell me why we're here right now.”

Louise had quit quivering and quaking about a minute after Solomon had come in. It didn't take as long as Michael had expected it to for her to comprehend that her former boss was behind the kidnapping. It was apparent that she knew the old man inside and out. For that reason, it didn't take long before her fear of Michael and his crew transformed into anger at Solomon and that's when the bickering started. She was worlds more talkative than she had been in the car.

“Right,” barked Solomon, jabbing his finger in the air. “Well, things are tough in the movie business, Louise, even tougher than when you worked at the studio. I can barely keep my head above water and I got investors and the film board breathin' down my neck. I gotta nail this next picture if I'm gonna-”

“You ever considered, ya know... _retiring?_ Like you kept saying you would?” she shot at him.

Solomon ignored her interjection, apparently displeased with the _R bomb_ as he cringed as soon as she said it. He simply continued. “And desperate times call for desperate measures, so to make a long story short, I got involved with some Teamster types-”

 _“Teamsters,”_ Louise groaned. “Jesus, man, what decade do you think it is?”

“Now, Louise, if you would shut your pretty little yap for one second and listen you will notice I said Teamster types. Now, they're not proper mafioso or anything, at least I don't think they are, but they _are_ serious.” The old man was pacing and waving his arms around frantically, barely pausing for a breath as he spoke. Louise was glaring at him. “And you can call foul on me if you want, but they know that you're married to Greg Bisby, _wunderkind Vinewood director,_ and if I hadn't intervened where you're concerned, they would have and it would not be pretty,” he growled.

When Louise replied, she spoke as slowly and carefully as if one would if they were talking to a toddler instead of an elderly producer.

“That's just it, Sol, this doesn't concern me. My marriage is ending. He and I are estranged. We don't speak and I don't want to be involved in this. So, make whatever calls you have to make because I'm not staying here.”

“I will be happy to try to make alternative arrangements for you just as soon as you tell me where Greg is,” Solomon said calmly, dusting off his shoulder.

Louise continued to glare at the old man and shook her head, clearly frustrated.

“I haven't seen Greg in a month, Sol. I don't know where he is.” She leaned back in her chair and tilted her head at him and it was so natural that you almost couldn't tell that her hands were tied behind her back. “You know I got a call from a dog kennel the other day? _Yeah,_ telling me that he left that stupid little chihuahua that you gave him there, oh _thanks for that,_ by the way, and that he hadn't picked her up on the scheduled date...So, he's probably getting fanned with palm fronds under a cabana in Mexico while Lacey Jonas spins circles on top of him. _Check there.”_

Franklin let out a little laugh, but quickly stifled it when Michael shot him a look. At that, Solomon's level of frustration began climbing to meet Louise's.

“Ergh! I am trying to protect you, Louise. You know, you're just like all the other millenials, just so, so ungrateful!”

The three other men in the room shifted uncomfortably where they sat. Michael sat at a little table in the corner, drumming his fingers. Franklin sat across from him, pulling at the drawstring of his hoodie while Lester sat on the bed pretending to fiddle around on a laptop. There was something very unsettling about watching a twenty-seven-year-old woman who was _tied up_ laying into the elderly man that had gotten her in that position in the first place.

Louise's gaped at him. _“Ungrateful!”_ she guffawed. “What about all the times you grabbed my ass and I didn't punch your lights out like I should have, or-or all the times I stayed at the studio until 3 a.m. feeding your sensitive documents into a paper shredder. I mean, God knows how many crimes I'm probably an accessory to just for that, or...” Her eyes got wide as though she had saved the best for last. “What about the time your son Denny tried to get conservatorship over you so he could put you in a retirement home? Who stopped him from doing that?”

Solomon sighed. “You are a very persuasive and articulate young lady, Louise, I've always said so but-”

“No, Sol.” She closed her eyes and lowered her voice. “Talking didn't keep you out of that retirement home.” She opened her eyes and peered up at him. “Your invertebrate dirtbag of a son had been eighty-sixed from every strip club and peep show in L.S. County and he was jonesin'. So I _lap danced_ your way out of that arrangement for you and it was the most _disgusting, degrading_ three and a half minutes of my life,” she yelled. All the men stopped what they were doing and raised their heads to look at Louise, each wearing their own color of shocked and intrigued. “I took a ninety-minute shower after and I _still_ felt gross. So I'd think twice before you call me ungrateful again, understand?” she said, pointing at him with her toe.

Perhaps Solomon hadn't heard what she had just said or perhaps he really was at an impasse, but he just balled his fists and stamped his foot.

“I can't deal with you when you're like this, young lady! I am leaving you here. These boys are going to keep an eye on you and we'll talk when you've calmed down,” he said.

With that, he stomped out of the room. Michael hopped up to follow him. It was nightfall in Chumash and Michael could smell the ocean air. He retrieved his cigarettes from the breast-pocket of his suit jacket.

“Ugh, that woman...Light of my life, bane of my existence, I tell ya. Best assistant I ever had but when she gets going with the mouthy stuff...” he clucked.

Michael snorted. “Yeah, she seems, uh, _spirited_ ,” Michael replied, pulling a cigarette out of his pack. His lip still smarted where she had head-butted him.

“I don't understand her, you know? I mean, she hates movie premiers, she hates money, she hates excess. She hates all the things that we live for Michael! It's no wonder her marriage to Greg is ending...” Solomon said, shaking his head. Just when Michael thought that Solomon's rant was over, he started up again. “You know, first day she walked into my office, I hired her on the spot 'cause she was a dead ringer for Jill Modell...You might not have heard of her, she was an obscure starlet from the fifties and she died of a opiate overdose before she was properly canonized...”

“I know Jill Modell,” Michael affirmed.

Solomon nodded in acknowledgment before continuing, talking as much with his hands as he did with his mouth. “...Anyway, Louise walks in-she was a redhead back then, a little chubbier, too- and I was smitten! Smitten, Michael, I swear!”

“Uh-huh,” Michael replied, lighting his cigarette.

“Now she's jumpin' down my throat...And where does she get off giving me grief for coppin' a feel once in a while, huh? Did you get a look at her ass? It's exquisite!”

Michael laughed, a little uncomfortably. “It's a new era, Solomon, we can't get away with stuff like that anymore.”

Solomon's waiting driver flashed his lights at the pair and pointed as his watch. Solomon looked at his own watch and shook his head.

“I gotta skedaddle, Michael, I got some dailies to go over...” He looked up at Michael with an ardent look in his eye. “Listen, I know she's a mouthy little broad, but don't do anything to hurt her, okay?” Solomon said.

“I wouldn't dream of it, Solomon,” replied Michael, earnestly.

“At least not before you get a look at her ass!” Solomon joked.

Michael chuckled. “Sure thing.”

“I'll be in contact, Michael. Best of luck dealing with the little lady,” Solomon said, striding toward the waiting car.

He got in and Michael waved him off before he started back into the motel room. The atmosphere was markedly less tense than it had been before, at least for Franklin and Lester.

“Lester, you get a hit on Bisby's credit card activity yet?” Michael asked.

Lester shook his head. Staring at his computer, he said “No, not yet. He might be paying cash. I tried to lock in on Lacey Jonas's activity, too, but I haven't turned anything up yet.”

Michael pulled a chair over to where Louise was and took a seat. She had gotten quiet again and was obviously avoiding his eyes. He took the opportunity to look her over. She was a little too cherubic to be a _bombshell,_ even with her curves. She was pretty, with a round, lightly freckled baby-face. Her dark hair set off a pair of round light-colored eyes, eyes that Michael was now trying to meet. 

He turned to Franklin and Lester.

“Hey, why don't you guys head out for a minute, grab us all something to eat?” he said.

Lester and Franklin exchanged glances.

“Okay,” said Franklin.

He helped Lester out of the bed and retrieved his cane for him. Both men looked at Michael and Louise one more time before they headed out the door, wearing twin looks of uncertainty.

“Hey, uh...Louise is it?” Michael asked as if he didn't know.

In fact, he had known her name well since Solomon had come to him with his little studio conundrum, rambling on about how he had gotten in too deep with these toughs that wanted to get Greg Bisby into an empty room to talk about his casting decisions on their latest action flick. Bisby had apparently flipped his lid and re-cast the whole thing at the last minute, costing a lot of angry, well-connected people _beau coup_ bucks. Unfortunately, Bisby had garnered himself a pretty wide sphere of influence over the past few years and he had complete creative control. Now his wife was a pawn in this crazy scheme to get everything sorted out.

“Could you please look at me?” Michael asked.

She didn't budge. Her expression was somewhere between angry and wary.

Michael continued, “Look, I'm sorry about all of this. That was rough back there, I know. But, uh...”

She turned her head to meet his gaze. He saw now that her eyes were verdant and he was surprised he hadn't noticed earlier. If looks could kill.

“... _But, uh,_ you work for a senile old prick that decided that it was a good idea to completely upend my life for a movie,” she scoffed.

Michael chuckled humorlessly.

“Jesus tap dancing Christ, kid. I kinda wish you would go back to the shit scared little mouse that you were on the ride over here, ya know that?”

Louise stared at him blankly. “On the ride over here, I was mentally preparing myself to watch my entrails being ripped out of my belly by a bunch of deranged Altruists. That was before I saw Solomon.”

“Yeah, well don't give me any good ideas, sweetheart, 'cause Solomon ain't here anymore,” he replied leaning in just a few inches from her face.

He was trying to affect a threatening air. Fuck knew he'd had plenty of practice, but it would appear that as unpleasant as her encounter with Solomon had been, it had put her at ease somewhat as she simply cocked her eyebrow at him. He retreated from her face.

“Just tell us where your husband is and we can put this behind us.”

Louise shook her head at him with a disbelieving look on her face.

“Has everyone lost their ability to grasp simple notions? I already said I don't know where he is,” she spat.

“Fine,” Michael said with a stiff lip, looking down his nose at her. “When was the last time you talked to him?”

“A month ago,” she replied tersely.

“Where?”

“At the house. He was ignoring my calls, so I went to talk to him in person.”

“About what?”

“About why he was dragging ass getting the divorce papers signed.”

“What happened?”

“We argued and I left.”

“That's it? He didn't mention that he was going to leave town?” Louise sighed.

“No. In between him doing rails off the coffee table and calling me a selfish cow, his travel plans didn't come up.”

Michael stood up. He paced back and forth with his back to her for a minute before he turned around. He looked at her again. This girl might have been a pain in the padded ass, but Michael could tell that if she had had something that could get her out of this situation, she would have given it up by now.

“Look, I believe you. But I can't let you go. Solomon wasn't lying when he said that their might be other people who have ugly designs on your life, okay? He really was trying to protect you,” he said.

Louise squeezed her eyes shut, obviously disappointed at this news.

“Then why am I tied up, still?”

Michael sighed. He felt a little guilty that they had left her there like that, but he didn't want to chance her getting all riled up again and him having to subdue her. He didn't enjoy scaring women and he sure as hell didn't enjoy knocking them out. He thought for a moment.

“You want me to untie you? Okay, but you gotta promise me something first,” he said pointing at her.

“Anything,” she said, genuinely exasperated by the look of it.

He continued to point at her. “You don't kick, you don't scream, you don't bite, you don't run. 'Cause Solomon told me not to hurt you and I don't wanna have to, you understand?”

Louise considered this for a moment before wordlessly nodding her head.

Michael walked behind her and pulled out a utility knife. He carefully slipped in between her skin and the zip tie and made a quick, clean cut.

Louise let out a relieved sigh. He walked around to the front of her and sat back down. Louise gyrated her arms and rubbed her wrists and rolled her head and shoulders around, still sighing with relief. She looked at Michael.

“Now what?” she asked him.

“Now we wait,” he replied flatly before adding “And when Franklin and Lester get back with the food, you're going to eat. Solomon told me you're hypoglycemic. Lester, the guy with the cane, is going to keep trying to get a lock on your husband with your help. He'll have some questions to ask you.”

Louise turned her head slightly to the side and looked at Michael out the side of her eye before she looked past him, toward the bathroom. She pointed toward the bathroom tenuously.

“Can I-” she started.

“Go ahead,” he interrupted.

Louise looked to the ceiling with a look of reprieve and whispered _“Aw, thank fuck,”_ before she shot out of her seat. Michael watched her walk to the bathroom, taking in a good eye full before she shut the door behind her.

 _What'dya know,_ he thought. _Solomon was right about one thing._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's our boy :) Oh, and by way of disclosure, I would like to apologize to any small-dog enthusiasts. Louise Bisby's views on small-dogs do not necessarily reflect my own.

Trevor pulled up to the little motel in Chumash at around eight a.m. He hadn't slept all night, instead opting to do a bump of speed once his party bug was starting to peter out. He thought it would be a nice change of pace to show up early, if only to see the look on Michael's face.

He had gotten a wordy text from Michael the night before, explaining that they had a situation with some old movie producer and mobsters and some lady, _blah, blah, blah._ Trevor couldn't help but be a little amused that Michael had chosen to make his explanation so convoluted as if Trevor wasn't always in the mood to jam people up, no matter what the circumstances were. He didn't need a sales pitch. He loved a good conflict and things had been quiet in Sandy Shores and he was getting antsy. So he had just skimmed over the text message to get the pertinent information.

_Chumash. Langolier Motel. Rm 119. 10 a.m._

He walked to the room and tried the door handle. It was locked. He pressed his ear to the door but heard nothing. He peered out toward the parking lot. There was no sign of Michael or Franklin's cars. _Fuck it, I'll wait._ But he'd be damned if he was going to sit on his hands out in that parking lot. This hotel looked sleazy enough that he could probably find some porn channels.

He reached into his pocket and extracted a lock pick and set about moving some bolts around until he hit the sweet spot. He opened the door and peered inside. It was dark. The cheap, vinyl vertical blinds were drawn tight. He looked at the bed and saw a stirring and then he heard a growl. A chubby, black dog slept at the foot of the bed. He was about to pull his gun out of his waist band when the dog hopped down and wagged his little nub. It was Chop.

“Hey, Chop,” Trevor chirped, leaning down and giving the dog a scratch behind the ears. _“Gooboy,_ Chop!” he crooned. Chop licked his wrist before hopping back up onto the bed, nuzzling into another lump, a lump that stirred now. Trevor couldn't see, but figured that it must be Franklin. _Lazy bastard, sleeping on the job again._

Trevor walked to the window and yanked on the cord to the blinds, abruptly filling the room with the morning sun.

“Up and at 'em, home boy!” he barked. He walked over toward the bed and flicked on the T.V. before taking a seat on the edge of the mattress. He felt the mattress move under him. The Trevor Philips bedside alarm had worked its magic. He flipped through some channels as he spoke. “So where the fuck is Michael, anyway? He dragged me all the way down here and he's not even here to give me a proper welcome?”

Silence. The mattress had stopped shifting.

“Aw come on, Frank, I know it's early, but if you want to keep me here, you're going to need to hone your famous conversational skills before I get antsy and decide to leave,” he said.

More silence. More stillness. Trevor sighed and got up from the bed and turned around to face his sleepy friend.

However, instead of the face of a young black male, he was met with a pair of large eyes staring wide up at him beneath a tangle of black hair. A lady, who sat up, with one eye on Trevor as she buried her face into Chop's shoulder, using him as a shield. She clutched the comforter to her chest. For his part, Chop panted and craned his neck to lick the top of her head.

“Well, hello there,” Trevor said.

The woman's eyes began flitting around the room, probably looking for a weapon.

“Um...”

“Easy, darlin'. I ain't here to hurt you. Look,” he said pointing at the dog. “Chop didn't rip my face off when I came in, so I have his vote of confidence,” Trevor said playfully.

The woman slowly lowered the comforter and released Chop, who promptly circled the bed and laid back down next to her. Trevor got a good eye full of the casabas she was smuggling in her white camisole before he looked back up at her face. _Nice, nice, nice on all counts._

“So, are you the lady Michael was telling me about?”

“I wouldn't know,” she said, eyes still wide. “What did he tell you?” she asked quietly. Trevor snorted.

“Fuck if I remember. I only listen to a quarter of the things he says, but he told me to come down here to help with whatever mess he's gotten himself involved with, so here I am.”

The woman's shoulders relaxed a little bit, but promptly tensed up again when the hotel door blew back open. Michael and Franklin strode through the door holding coffees and pastry bags. Franklin walked over to a table in the corner and placed his load of morning fuel on top of it before turning to Chop, who had hopped off the bed to greet him.

“Hey, boy, did you hold it down while we was away?” he cooed at the dog, scratching his chest.

Michael stood frozen and looked between Trevor and the woman on the bed. “T, what are you doin' here?” Michael asked his friend. Trevor glared at him and opened his arms.

_“Oh, Trevor, it's nice to see you, man. Thanks for dropping everything and coming all the way down to Chumash on the turn of a dime to help me with my stupid problems...”_

Michael rolled his eyes.

“I wasn't expecting you here so early, T. That's all I meant by it. You were never a morning person,” he said.

He walked toward the bed where the young woman was seated. She looked a little more relaxed, if not a little suspicious. Michael handed her a cup of coffee.

“Ah, you don't _have_ to be a morning person if you don't fall asleep the night before, Mikey,” Trevor said.

Suddenly, he noticed that Michael's bottom lip was swollen and bore a small cut.

“So, uh,” he started gesturing toward the woman with his head.

Michael knew him well enough to cut him off before he said anything unseemly.

“This is Louise, T. I'm guessing you haven't been properly introduced,” he said looking down at Louise, who had yet to utter more than a couple of sentences.

Louise looked to Michael and then back up at Trevor, her eyes softening a little bit, but still betraying an averseness.

“Hi,” she said quietly.

Michael snorted. “There's that mouse again,” he said. “I should'a got T in on this earlier.”

Trevor glared at Michael, suddenly feeling the need to defend this woman that he'd only just met.

“Hey, Mikey, no need to insult her. Just 'cause you like your women silent and subservient-”

“Don't start in on me now. If you'd seen the fight she put up the other night-”

“Well, _someone_ needs to keep you on your toes, Mikey. You're getting soft in your old age. Did she do that to your lip?” he asked suddenly, pointing and chuckling.

“Ay!” barked Franklin. “Would y'all knock it the fuck off? She only just woke up. It's too early for her, or anyone else for that matter, to be listenin' to your bitter asses bickerin' at eachother. _Damn.”_ Franklin addressed Louise. “'Sup, Louise?”

“Morning, Franklin,” she said, her voice hoarse with sleep, shooting him a faint smile and sipping her coffee.

Franklin grabbed a bag of stuff that he had also carried into the room a few minutes earlier, a small duffel, and set it on the bed next to her.

“They ain't ransacked your place yet, so here's some clothes and things,” he said. Louise thanked him before he continued. “Man, looks like you and Chop hit if off. After that stuff you said about your husband's chihuahua, I figured you didn't like dogs.”

“Chihuahuas aren't dogs. Neither are Pomeranians or Yorkies,” she said, shaking her head, looking down.

 _“A-fuckin'-men,”_ Trevor said. She looked up at him again.

“Chop's a good dog, thanks for leaving him,” she said without taking her eyes off of Trevor.

She took another sip from her coffee cup before she set it down on the nightstand. She wordlessly grabbed the duffel bag and got up. She disappeared into the bathroom and closed the door behind her.

“Mmm, I like her,” Trevor purred, still staring at the closed bathroom door.

He saw Michael shoot him a look from the corner of his eye. He looked over to meet his gaze.

“Don't even think about it, T. She's not Patricia Madrazzo, so hands off,” Michael said firmly.

Trevor rolled his eyes.

“Are you ever going to fucking let that go?”

“Not a chance in hell, T. Now, have a seat and I'll tell you what's been going on.”

 

 

 

Louise emerged from the bathroom a half an hour later, showered and dressed. Chop promptly padded over to her and sat at her feet. She stood in front of the three men now, reluctantly letting them all eye-ball her for a minute before she shifted.

“So what's the plan?” she asked, crossing her arms and averting her eyes.

“Well, we need to go and meet with Lester,” Michael started. “He has some more questions for you. He thinks that you might be able to furnish him with enough information about your husband to find out where to look, but he wants to do it with all his equipment at the ready. We do that, we get him to negotiate with those teamsters, you get to go home.”

“You're making it sound so easy,” she said.

“Yeah, why not?” Michael replied.

“Because this isn't the first time that Greg's done this. Disappeared himself. He ran away to Greece for eight weeks one time,” she said.

She stooped over and started scratching Chop's chest, much to his delight. To Trevor's too, as he could see down her dress from this vantage.

“Greece? Why didn't you mention that before, he might be there?” Michael said, sounding agitated.

 _“No,_ he hates it there. He says there are too many tourists. Besides, he's really insecure about his masculinity. He wouldn't take Lacey somewhere he would have to compete with a bunch of taut Adonises for her attention,” she said bitterly, rubbing the back of her neck as she stood up.

Trevor snorted.

“Too _touristy_ for the tourist, huh?”

“He's nothing if not pretentious,” Louise replied abruptly, meeting his eyes and then immediately wincing as though she regretted saying it.

_Yeah, you wouldn't want to disparage your husband in front of the guy who's been shamelessly eye-fucking you since he walked through that door._

“Well, that means we got our work cut out for us, then,” Michael sighed. “Let's head to Lester's and see what he's got for us.”

 

 

 

Michael decreed that the foursome would be taking his car to Lester's as Trevor's truck was a tinder box and Franklin's was too fast, but it was a pretty transparent bid for control over the situation. Now that Trevor was there, he was going to white-knuckle it through this thing. Trevor knew that Michael needed all hands on deck but there was no doubt that showing up early had thrown a wrench into his ability to devise a plan on how to exercise restraint over Trevor. Trevor found that hilarious.

He was surprised that Michael had let him seat himself in the back with Louise. He was probably worried that if he had insisted that she sit up front with him that it would spook her, that she would assume that she was in some kind of danger and try to make a break for it. This chick obviously didn't want to be there and she was biting her tongue a lot. You could see it all over her face. Luckily, though, as they traveled up Route 1, she became a little more talkative. He suspected that she didn't want to make it weirder for everyone by being mute because, in the popular imagination, when a bunch of psychopathic career criminals get to feeling weird they get to acting weird and that's when they start doing things that can't be undone.

Now admittedly, the conversation had turned to sensitive subject matter pretty early on in the drive. And Trevor may or may not have been the _engineer_ of the conversational tone, but it's not like he had to pull teeth to get Franklin and Michael curious about Louise, who had become defensive to the point of verbosity.

“No, he was not always a wine-sipping, chomo-spec-wearing, handle-bar-moustache-sporting, Vinewood-fluff-peddling ironic consumer of retro public access and...” she spat at Trevor before continuing inquiringly “What was the last thing you said?”

Trevor couldn't help but be impressed that Louise had, in one breath, just regurgitated almost every one of his scathing indictments of her estranged husband that he had made over the last twenty minutes. And with striking accuracy. She was some kind of savant. Or she'd heard all those things said about her husband before.

“Consumer of former child starlet strange...”

“Right,” she growled. “He wasn't that, either.”

"Then what was he, huh, Lou? A swell guy? Boy Scout?” lilted Trevor.

“He was creative and kind and ambitious and that's why I married him, but what can I tell ya? People change,” she said flatly.

Trevor couldn't get a good read on her current temperament as she was wearing big, black sunglasses, but he could tell that he was grating at her. And he was loving it. Her face scrunched up when she was trying to deflect her rage.

“How did he become a Vinewood big-shot with qualities like those?” he quipped.

Louise let out a low chuckle despite herself without looking at him. He delighted in it a little bit. It was the first time that she had smiled and he noticed now that she had dimples.

“Easy, T,” Michael started from the front seat. “Vinewood's my semi-retirement bread and butter, you know that.”

“Case and point,” replied Trevor, gesturing to Michael.

Finally, she looked at him, smirking and biting her lip.

“T does bring up a good point, though, Louise. How _did_ your husband get so successful?” asked Michael.

Louise pondered this for a moment before answering.

“Greg and Sol met at our office Christmas party one year and they hit it off. Greg became his protege.”

“A-ha!” said Trevor. “Good old nepotism, huh? I figured you had something to do with it. I've seen that guy's movies...So you made his career for him, huh?”

“No,” Louise shot back defensively. “They just had similar ideas about the industry and stuff. Besides, I would never do anything to make it so I had to see Sol outside of work.”

“Now _that_ is bullshit,” said Michael. “You doted on him. You gave his son a lap dance to keep him out of a home for chrissakes.”

Trevor's ears perked up.

“Classy cakes gave someone a lap dance to save her boss from sponge baths and soft food? Color me impressed,” he purred at her, giving her a once-over with his eyes.

She was obviously trying to ignore Michael's slip of the tongue regarding her brief, charitable foray into the erotic entertainment sector.

“Can we change the subject, please?” she asked flatly.

“Yes, Louise, I'm glad you asked because I am just itching to hear your thoughts on this whole business with your husband and Lacey Jonas,” Trevor said tauntingly.

Franklin turned around to face Trevor. He had that very Franklin look on his face, the look that he wore when he was scolding him and Michael for constantly being at each other's throats.

“You wanna give it a rest, man? You don't knock it off, she's gonna jump out the car,” he spat.

Louise looked between Franklin and Trevor with a look of fascination. Trevor held his hands up in mock defense.

“Hey, hey, hey. Now, I am just trying to get young Louise to open up, to _vent_. She's going through a bitter separation and I don't see any of her girlfriends around, ready to lend an ear.” He turned to her. “Now, Louise, this is a safe space. I want for you to tell us how much you want to murder Lacey Jonas and how you would do it if you know you could get off scot-free.”

She stared straight forward now, wearing what Trevor thought was a very impressive poker face given what was under discussion. The fact of the matter was that after Michael had told him everything about what was going on with her and her husband and her old boss and mobsters, Trevor had started to take something that resembled pity on her, which was only galvanized when she walked out of the bathroom after her shower looking like a vestal virgin. He wanted to see her angry so that he could know that she wasn't some kind of martyr. If there was one thing in this world that made Trevor Philips uncomfortable, it was the blameless. So, now he employed a similar tactic on her that he used on his crew members when he wanted to rile them up before a heist.

“Come on, sweets. Give it to me straight. It must be a real bite to know that your husband ran off with someone who thinks that it's cool to wear leggings as pants,” he said.

There was that smile again. He could practically feel his amygdala doing a victory dance in his head. She was quiet for a moment before she finally spoke, turning to face Trevor.

“Lacey Jonas is just one genetic lottery winner in a line of many that flashed Greg a little thigh at a premier party. Just because she was the first to get her hooks into him _that I know of_ doesn't mean that she's the disease. She's just another symptom. But _I'm_ not sick anymore,” she said pointing to her chest and held her finger there, inadvertently bringing Trevor's attention to her breasts again. “So no, Trevor, I don't want to murder Lacey Jonas,” she replied dryly.

Trevor's patience was already thin as it always was when he couldn't get a rise out of someone and he felt a spike of anger and frustration rise in him before he shouted

“For fucksake, Louise, your husband cheated on you! Why the fuck are you being so zen about it!”

Franklin and Michael were both stirring in their seats, muttering under their breaths. Louise, however, seemed to be basking a little bit in Trevor's sudden temper. She seemed to be subtly toying with him more than trying to appease him. He must have held some kind of exoticism for her. Either that or she was countering his tactic with one that she had reserved for her impudent students up to this point. In an even tone, she gave him his reply.

“Because, Trevor, the cheating was not the biggest problem in our marriage. The biggest problem was that Greg and I have different ideas about what kinds of lifestyles we want. He wants silicone, celluloid, and blow and I want to paint some pictures and hang out with kids,” she said in a low voice.

She sounded so sincere that it threw Trevor off. He was hoping that she would at least lie through her teeth at him so that he could find a weakness to exploit, but what she was saying didn't sound like complete bullshit.

“Besides,” she continued flatly, errantly chewing the pendant hanging around her neck, “I cheated, too.”

_Bingo._

 

 

 

The five of them sat in Lester's dark house, in a room that seemed to serve double-duty as a bedroom and spy outpost. The windows were papered over with old, yellowed newsprint and there was all manner of electronic shit covering the walls with untold functions. The walls also boasted hermetically-sealed collectibles from cartoons and video games. Yep, this room belonged to a new school poindexter, alright.

“So, when you cheated on your husband, Louise, was it with a pool cleaner or was it with someone less cliché, like the manager of a bodega?” Trevor asked.

“Louise, are you _sure_ that when you talked to your husband last he didn't mention any travel plans, even in passing?” Lester asked.

“I already asked her that, Lest, she said no,” Michael said.

“Did you do it in the bed that you shared with your husband or on the kitchen counter or in the jacuzzi...?” asked Trevor.

“Does your husband have one of those private, paperless accounts? Like Cardinal by Maze Bank?” Lester asked.

Louise sat at the center of the circle of men. She didn't know how she ended up in this hot seat, whether it was deliberately placed in the center or if some act of collective consciousness had landed her there, but it was absolutely uncomfortable. Not only did all the electronics give off enough heat to make the room feel like a sauna, but they had all entered in to some unspoken agreement to ignore Trevor's whimsical attempts to break down her resistance and reveal more about the affair that she had stupidly disclosed.

She hadn't done it to open herself up to attack, rather she had done it because Trevor had spoken about Greg as though he were an insect. While she felt that she had a right to cast him as one for her own personal, nuanced reasons, she had always been fatally, preemptively honest about her own failings. More over, she knew that if Greg was the bad guy philanderer, that made her the stupid, pushover of a jilted wife. _And fuck that._

“Uh, I wouldn't know. We do have an account at Maze Bank. I could call them but not until after the long weekend. And I don't know any of the passwords off-hand.” she said, fanning herself with her collar.

“Can you think of _anything?_ Any means of correspondence that we haven't thought of? ” Lester asked.

“Short of an honest to God letter, no.”

“Jesus, Lest, I thought your shit was state-of-the-art. Why do we have to do it the old way?” Michael asked.

“My shit is state-of-the-art, Michael, but apparently Louise's husband-”

 _“Ex-husband,”_ Trevor stated firmly.

 _“Soon-to-be ex-husband,”_ Louise corrected before muttering, “Hopefully.”

“Right,” said Lester before continuing. “Anyway, Greg Bisby must have known that we would be on him like flies on shit...”

“You've got the shit part right,” Trevor interjected.

“...And it would appear that, before he left town, he took pains to cover his tracks. He obviously brought in an expert, a _good_ one. I can guess who, too. I can access the information, but it will be slow coming until I can find a way to bypass all these firewalls.”

“Why don't you know your banking passwords, Louise?” Michael shot at her, clearly frustrated with her.

“Because, _Michael,_ Greg always insisted that they be thirty characters long with lots of numbers and random uppercase letters. I never bothered to memorize them because I didn't think that I was going to be kidnapped and compelled to give up that kind of information,” she spat back.

“But it's your bank account, too, Louise. How do you not keep track of that?” he said.

He was sounding increasingly more accusatory and Louise didn't like it. This must have been the grown man's answer to a hissy fit.

“I have my own account, too, Michael. I've had it for the entire seven years I've been here and that's what I use. Now if you're done playing financial adviser, maybe he has more questions for me to field,” she said trying to keep her voice from rising to a level that might imperil her. Or worse yet, draw his ire enough for him to bitch about how he wished that she were more _mousy. God,_ she hated that. He sounded just like Solomon.

“Well, aside from the obvious questions about flight itineraries and stuff, I'm afraid that I'm at a bit of an impasse, Louise,” Lester said.

Louise snorted humorlessly.

“So I was kidnapped and driven up and down the coast and held in a motel room with a bunch of strange men and now you're out of questions for me?” she said.

Her arms were crossed tight in front of her chest.

“Hey, hey, little sister,” chirped Trevor. “It wasn't for nothin'. I've enjoyed your company immensely. Listenin' to your stories about plastic people and extra-marital affairs...”

“Can it, T,” spat Michael. He got up and strode to where Louise sat, towering over her. “Louise, listen. From here on out, you're less captive, more harbored. You're not in the clear from these teamster guys that Solomon's been on about. That means I want for you to cooperate with us on anything we need until Greg turns up, you understand?”

Louise rose to her feet. She was pissed now. All she had done is cooperate with these fuckers, airing her dirty laundry for them ( _after_ she found out what their game was) and all this fucker in particular did was act like she was his wayward daughter or something.

“What in the ever-loving fuck does it look like I'm doing, Michael? I've been in your custody for thirty six hours. I didn't try to escape or sneak to a phone to call the cops...But nothing I do seems to satisfy you. I know you just _love_ Solomon and you think that he's in his right mind and he _must_ know what he's doing, but here's the deal,” she said, stepping toward him and pointing a finger in his face. “You're not doing either one of us any fucking favors if you can't recognize that my powers as a pawn in this bullshit are limited, you understand? I'll help you until I know that I'm safe, that Greg is safe, but you need to cut me some _fucking slack,”_ she barked.

“You fuckin' tell him, baby-doll!” shouted Trevor.

She didn't realize it, but she was shaking now. She could feel her heart beating in her ears and she perceived strings of light dancing around her head. Her ears were ringing. _Oh no._ It had come on much more suddenly than usual. Yep, she knew what was coming next. Beads of blackness quickly crowded her vision before she felt her legs give out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh, my ladies are always fainting. I'm such a sucker for that trope :p Stay tuned for more cah-razy dialogue and such.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, so I have found Franklin to be a hard character to write and I think that it might be because, compared to the other two fellas, he's written pretty thin. I hate to disparage the creators of the game that we know and love, by my glob. Anyway, I love Frank regardless and I hope that I captured his interior life well. Fuck knows I tried. Kisses.

A half an hour after Louise had passed out, the foursome that consisted of her, Franklin, Trevor, and Michael sat in a little diner in Vespucci Beach. Louise stared down at the white paper place mat that she was drawing on with crayons while she idly munched on a plate of french fries. Michael sipped an ice tea, avoiding everyone's eyes while Trevor hovered over Louise, occasionally shooting Michael a dirty look. Franklin sat next to Michael, training his eyes on Louise's drawing, a cartoonish but detailed rendering of him and Chop that she expertly layered with color, light and dark values.

Franklin was trying to push aside his anger at his two friends. Though he knew that it wasn't Michael's fault that Louise had passed out, (her blood sugar was low, Lester's house was hot, and she was under a lot of stress) it was hard not to make a tacit association between the way he had been talking to her and her sudden collapse. And that shit was scary.

Franklin had watched as her eyes had fluttered open and shut and then rolled back in her head before she lost consciousness completely. The sight had made him flash back to when he was a kid. His mom's eyes had done the same thing when she'd been hitting the pipe too hard and one day she hadn't woken up. Louise had, thankfully. But it was still a fucking terrifying sight to behold.

Now Trevor's arm was slung over the back of the booth that he and Louise shared and Franklin didn't like the way that he was looking at her. It wasn't a lecherous gaze, but Franklin knew that he was going to exploit this situation, to use it as further ammunition against Michael, with whom he still had a shaky relationship, even after what the three had done concerning Devin Weston. Even after they had pulled various other jobs, big and small. On top of that, Trevor hadn't helped matters by trying to drag information about her cheating out of her back at the house. Franklin had had enough. This shit had already become insufferable.

“Is that me and Chop?” he asked of the drawing as if he didn't know.

“Mmhmm,” she replied without looking up. She was still acting kind of loopy and sleepy.

“That's really good. Who knew you could do so much with some cheap crayons,” he said, trying to break the palpable tension at the table.

“You can have it when I'm done,” she singsonged sleepily, between bites of a french fry.

“Thanks,” Franklin said. He was genuinely touched at the gesture.

Louise kind of reminded Franklin of an amalgamation of those few people from his childhood that had made him feel like he wasn't a total waste of space, that had encouraged him to steer clear of the kinds of illicit activities that took place in his neighborhood. Probably because he was aware that she spent her days trying to provide some guidance to kids that were a little bit like him. It's not like they could help getting involved. That was his neighborhood and what outsiders didn't understand was that you didn't go to the gang bangers asking them if you could be one of them. No, as long as you were living and breathing in that space, it wasn't a question of whether or not so much as it was a question of when and to what extent.

“Ya feelin' better, Louise?” Michael asked. Franklin thought he could detect some sheepishness in his voice.

“I've turned a corner,” she responded flatly, not looking up.

“Good,” Michael said, finally looking her way.

Louise hovered over her drawing intently for another minute, putting the finishing touches on it before sitting up straight and pushing it over to Franklin. Franklin considered the drawing for a moment before he smiled.

“Cool,” he said. She smiled back at him with sleepy eyes before her face dropped suddenly. Franklin noticed.

“You ain't gonna pass out again, are you?” he asked her.

“No,” she said in a long, drawn out way, shaking her head. “I, uh...I was just thinking...I left my car in the parking lot at the school.”

She looked between Michael and Franklin, imploringly. “Your car?” Franklin repeated, looking slowly over at Michael. When their eyes met, each could tell that they were thinking the same thing. _How could they have made such a rookie mistake?_

“I don't want it to get towed. I left some important stuff in there,” she said.

Just then, Trevor leaned across the table looking between the two of them. “You left her fucking car in a school parking lot without making arrangements for someone to come and get it? And you want for this...” he looked over at Louise, “arrangement to be simple? For nobody to realize that she's gone?”

“It was an honest mistake, T,” Michael said innocuously. “We had to move on it fast before shit hit the fan.”

Louise's eyes got wide as she pretended that she hadn't opened up the car topic for discussion. She sipped her water before looking up and shrugging.

“Why don't we run over there and get it?”

“What do you mean _we,_ Louise? We can't let you drive it, you might bolt,” Michael said.

“Well, assuming that nobody saw what you did and assuming that my car is still there...” she started, looking around and lowering her voice, “If for some reason any alert was raised about my whereabouts, like if someone filed a missing persons report, the first place they would check would be my last known location. That parking lot is lousy with security cameras. And I'm pretty sure that nothing raises an alarm quite like an abandoned car, so...” Louise trailed off and looked around at them.

“So,” Franklin said, “if anyone was so inclined to look at the security footage and they somehow _missed_ you getting pulled into a strange car, footage of someone besides you driving that car off the lot would definitely be enough to rouse suspicions.”

Louise touched her nose and then pointed at Franklin, looking at him through sleepy eyes.

Michael was twitching now.

“Fine. Fuck. Franklin, I'm going to drop you and Louise off at the school so you can grab the car. Louise can drive it off the lot, while you wait outside the hot zone. As soon as it's off the lot, though, I want for you to take over driving and drop the car at your place. I'll hang back and follow you.”

Trevor chuckled and clucked.

“Oh, Mikey. How you've slipped in your old age. Franklin's relatively new to the game, so he's got an excuse, but you. You are headed downhill fast, my friend.”

“Yeah, yuck it up, asshole,” Michael shot back. “Come on, let's get going,” he said, throwing some cash down on the table.

 

 

Franklin leaned against a chain link fence twenty yards or so away from the farthest reaches of the Elysian Alternative School perimeter. Michael and Trevor waited a few blocks away, parked at the curb of by an abandoned factory. He looked around the area, which was dilapidated and depressed even though there were still smoke stacks that showed signs of life. _Who the fuck thought that it was a good idea to plop a school in this shitty part of town,_ he thought.

It wasn't even appropriately named. The school wasn't actually in the Elysian area proper and it sure as fuck wasn't some mythological happy hunting ground. Then again, at least there weren't any gangs over this way, not all the time, at least. He sighed heavily and looked toward the school.

Louise was taking a little longer than he had expected and he was getting nervous. Finally, a powder blue Glendale rounded the corner and pulled up to the curb to meet him.

She got out of the driver's seat and made her way to the passenger side. Franklin hastily moved to the driver's side and hopped in. As soon as his door was shut, he put the car in gear and started driving.

“What took you so long? You were makin' me nervous,” Franklin said to Louise.

“Sorry,” she said defensively. “When you guys snatched me, I dropped my keys. I had to get on my hands and knees to look for them.”

They both remained silent for a moment before Louise piped up again.

“So where is your place, where're we going?”

“Vinewood Hills,” he said.

“Shit,” she said. “That's a ways up there.”

“What, girl, you afraid we ain't gonna have anything to talk about?” he jeered. She looked over at him and smiled.

“If I can find things to talk about with men two decades my senior, I can find something to talk about with someone my own age,” she said.

“No shit, right. It's a nice change not having to devote all my conversational skills to a couple of bitter old dudes.”

“I can only imagine,” she said, still smiling. “So, uh, if you don't mind my asking, how did you get involved with said bitter old dudes?” Franklin snorted.

“Shit,” Franklin said. “Uh, I hooked up with Michael after he caught me repossessing a car from his garage. I was workin' for this guy that was running a car dealin' racket and...I don't know, I guess Michael saw somethin' in me 'cause we been working together ever since.”

“He caught you breaking into his garage and decided to make you his protege?” she asked disbelievingly.

"Yeah, when you put it that way, it doesn't make a lot of sense, but pretty much, yeah.”

Louise nodded tentatively.

“And Trevor?”

Franklin laughed.

“That's a story for a different day, but him and Michael go way back. Like back before you and me was born.”

“Ugh. No wonder they can't stand each other,” she said.

 _“Right?”_ Franklin deadpanned.

“So did you grow up in L.S.?” she asked him.

“Yeah, Strawberry,” he replied.

“That's a rough neighborhood,” she said.

“You're tellin' me. Hell, I left and I still can't get out,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I got people there, you know. My friend Lamar still lives there, my Aunt Denise, too. And if Lamar's good for one thing, it's makin' trouble. I gotta pull his ass outta the fire at least once a month,” he said.“I guess you wouldn't know anything 'bout that, huh?”

“Nah. I grew up in a trailer park in Fort Carson but I haven't been back there in a long time,” she said.

Franklin guffawed.

“Shit, I guess you ain't fared much better.”

Louise shrugged. “It wasn't all bad. Besides, Fort Carson was kind of one big trailer park, anyway, aside from the small contingency of upper-middle-class elites that ran everything. But my dad was a good provider. He drove truck and that kept us afloat.”

“And your moms?”

“She waitressed and did hair and nails out of our house.”

“I bet you got to listen to all the hot gossip on the block, huh?” Franklin quipped.

Louise snorted. “Yeah, I got to hear stories about myself and my family that I didn't even know were stories.”

Franklin looked at her quizzically.

She explained “We were kinda the living embodiment of what you _didn't_ want to be even among the average resident of Fort Carson. My mom messed around on my dad a lot 'cause she blamed him for pulling her out of her blue-blood family and my brother was in jail every other weekend.”

“And you?”

“I stayed out of trouble for the most part but I got to enjoy everyone's judgments vicariously. Greg's parents owned half that town and my folks had such a bad reputation they actually disinherited him when we got married.”

“Shit, that's rough.”

“I don't know, I kind of feel like it was a good thing. Like it made it easier for me to ignore people's unfair judgments. I learned not to take things too personally and go my own way. I don't know if I could have walked away from Greg if I didn't have that under my belt, ya know? I mean, it's not like I never get my feelings hurt, but I'm good at keeping things in perspective.”

“That's cool,” Franklin said, looking at her and nodding.

They sat quietly for a minute.

“Do you have any kids?” she asked him.

“Pshh. Not that I know of...I mean, I hope not. I ain't exactly in a position to be a positive father figure to anyone,” he said.

“If Michael can do it you can,” she said, smirking.

“Yeah, but Michael almost lost his family to the life. Besides, I don't want my kids to grow up havin' to look over their shoulders all the time. I don't want that for myself, either. I'd probably keel over in my mid-forties. I don't know how Michael's still walkin'.”

Louise seemed to consider this for a moment.

“That's really thoughtful, Franklin. The thing about your kids having to look out all the time, I mean,” she said looking at him.

“Shit, I just thought I was being realistic. I respect reality,” he said.

Louise just stared at him for a minute and he looked over at her and realized that she was being totally serious.

Hell, why would she think otherwise? She spent her days at that school hanging out with lots of kids whose parents were in the life, kids that were on the fast track to that life themselves. It was so normal that being a decent parent probably _did_ surpass the bare minimum. Still, though, both of them knew that it wasn't so simple. You couldn't look down your nose at people just trying to get by with the opportunities afforded to them. That was just survival. Just like you couldn't blame a trucker for leaving his family for months at a time in a town full of people that treated them like scum.

Sure, maybe she and him didn't come from the same struggle, but they each came from _a_ struggle and they understood each other on a pretty fundamental level. He could see that. It was nice to have that understanding, especially from someone that didn't come up in the same place that he did. Everyone's experience was unique as much as he hated to admit it. It was easier to pigeon-hole, to deride people for trying to keep afloat and doing some reprehensible shit to achieve that. There was no room for nuance in this world, but as long as two people could come together and get each other, even a little bit, maybe there was some hope.

They pulled up to his house some time later. He parked the car in his garage where he knew it would be safe and they got out.

“God, Franklin, you and I could have been neighbors,” she laughed, looking up and down his street.

Franklin smiled despite himself. Given his internal dialogue between the end of their conversation and now, he couldn't help but appreciate the twisted amusement to be had from her observation. A couple of kids from the wrong sides of their respective towns, hanging their hats in Vinewood Hills, for ill or for good.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Louise and Trevor get bored and go to the beach. And reach an understanding of sorts. Please give me feedback, this one was kind of rough. Another short-ish one.

Louise lay on the floor at Trevor's feet. He was seated on the bed, which Louise had declared too boring. She sounded ridiculous and nonsensical but he had known what she meant. She had been crawling the walls wanting to get out of that room and she was willing to do anything to make the experience more novel.

She had opened and closed the windows more times than either of them could count, she had fiddled with the cords for the window treatments, she had straightened pictures. They were under orders to sit tight until Michael came back. Franklin was next door, in his room.

She stared up at the T.V., trying to hide her excitement every time a fight broke out between the hockey players.

“Well, well, well, little miss pacifist art teacher has a violent streak, does she?”

“Hockey fights aren't like other kinds of fights,” she said.

“You're right about that. They're worse in many ways,” he shot back.

Louise shot him a dirty look.

“I like hockey, okay? I was never terribly fond of organized sports, but I dig this one, so excuse me if I get a little excited when things get interesting,” she said defensively, getting up from the floor now.

She stood and faced him. It took him a minute to realize that she was staring at him expectantly.

“You, uh, see something you like?” he asked suggestively, rubbing the inside of his thigh. Louise ignored the gesture.

“I wanna go somewhere,” she said bluntly.

"I can take you all the way, Louise," he purred at her without looking up at her, knowing full well that she would ignore it.

"Get me out of here, Trevor," she said flatly.

Trevor tsked her, shooting her a taunting look. “You need to ask nicely, young lady. Where have your manners gone...”

He looked back at the T.V. She rolled her eyes and walked closer. She looked at him with a mock-pout.

“Trevor,” she said. “I would really like it if you would give me some yard time. Because I'm pretty sure if I don't get it soon, I'm going to shiv you.”

Trevor chuckled. “Don't threaten _me_ with a good time, baby.”

Louise turned away from him and walked over to the door where she slid on her combat boots and denim jacket.

“'S'go!” she whined, ignoring Michael's orders and heading outside.

“Christ, woman,” he said, pushing up from the bed before following her out the door.

 

 

Trevor sat in the sand and watched Louise run barefoot toward the receding tides and then back out with the water at her heels. She looked like she was pretending that she was being chased.

 _Hot damn, she had needed to get out of the room_.

She looked a little ridiculous, but also a little bit adorable.

He knew the feeling. He was always needing to get up and go, especially when he was tweaking.

When she tired of playing tag with the waves, she stooped over, examining the beach debris. She was too far away for him to see what it was she was looking at. Stuff to incorporate into her art projects, probably.

Louise ran up to him, finally, and plopped down next to him. She had grown more comfortable with him in the preceding days, barely even shrinking from him when he was blatantly checking her out.

She stretched her legs out in front of her and rubbed her feet together, letting the sand grains roll off. Trevor wasn't a beach guy, but he was content to watch Louise run around like an idiot for a little while.

She picked up a stick that was laying on the ground and started drawing circles in the sand.

“If you track sand into my truck I'm going to tan your hide,” he lied.

Louise looked at him.

 _“Don't threaten me with a good time,”_ she said, mockingly, in a faux-masculine voice, echoing his sentiment from before.

She dug the stick that she was holding into the sand between them and flung some in his face.

He snatched the stick from her and broke it in half before casting it aside. She held her hand frozen where he had snatched it from her before leaning back on the heels of her hands. He looked at her, noticing suddenly how much younger she looked than her own age when she was dressed down, not wearing makeup.

“So, you're two default modes are horny and pissed off. Good to know,” she said.

“Sometimes both. It's served me well in my time on this planet,” he said cavalierly, glancing away from her.

She looked at the ground between them and started picking up hand fulls of sand, pouring it slowly back on the ground.

“Has it, now?” she asked flatly.

“Yeah, why not? I like the things I like and if I don't like something, I _destroy_ it,” he said menacingly, gesturing to the stick on the ground.

Her eyes suddenly looked an even paler shade of green, which disarmed him a little bit.

“That's kind of limiting isn't it? Don't you want to experience the full spectrum of human emotion?”

“Fuck,” he spat. “Are you going to start analyzing me now?”

He flashed suddenly on the psychiatrist that had overseen his psych eval at the tail-end of his time in the airforce. How she had stood in judgment of him, looking down her nose at him before she harpooned his military career.

“I've been analyzing you since I woke up to you standing there,” she said. “And you've been doing the same to me, Trevor. Don't try to tell me otherwise.”

She looked back out at the water.

“In what way have I been analyzing you, Louise?” he said, genuinely curious about her thoughts on that subject.

“Oh, I don't know, picking apart my personal life, trying to make me squirm every chance you get...”

“Hey,” he shot defensively, “that's just my _modus operandi,_ okay? How fucking boring would the past several days have been if I didn't make an effort to get to know you, huh?”

Louise guffawed. “You could have tried, I don't know, having a _conversation_ with me that isn't one-sided,” she said sarcastically.

“Well, it wouldn't be one-sided if you didn't recoil every time I opened my mouth, would it?”

“Well, Trevor, to be fair, every time your mouth opens, it's usually a pretty good indication that you're about to go on the offensive.”

He laughed humorlessly. “Well, excuse me, sweets, but that's pretty rich coming from someone that seems to be perpetually stuck on the _defensive._ And you know something else, I know you can't _stand_ being around me-”

“That's not true, Trevor,” she barked as she bristled. She was looking at him again, ardently but angrily as though he had actually struck a nerve. She seemed sincere. “Jesus, who hurt you? It's like to walk into every acquaintance assuming that whoever you meet is going to hate you or something.”

Trevor held his arms out in an exaggerated shrug.

“Well if the shoe fuckin' fits, Lou...Anyway, you're the one that wants to keep everything under your fucking hat as if any of it matters,” he spat.

Lou shook her head angrily. “I'm a private person, okay? That's why I hate Vinewood, you know? And I'm still a little bit skeeved out by the fact that Michael and you and Franklin know so much about my life. You know what I do for a living, you know about me and Greg, you know about the cheating...”

“You volunteered that information, Lou,” he said dryly, still looking at her.

“Yeah, I did. But I did it because I'd rather have you think of me as a philandering harpy than a docile, repressed little flower.”

“Why do _you_ care what _I_ think of you?” he barked.

Louise considered this for a moment, looking off in the distance. She turned back to him and locked eyes with him again.

“Because if there's one thing that I've learned from everything that's happened to me, especially in the past few years and _most_ especially in the past week, it's that people can lie without opening their mouths. You can _live_ a lie for a long time without realizing it. And if there's anything I can do to preclude that, even if it means that some people think that I'm crazy or stupid or a bad person, then I'm going to do it. Because even if I get fucked over a thousand times, if I can say that I did everything I could to resist the temptation to go through life bullshitting myself and everyone else, then I'll be okay. But until I have myself figured out enough to do that, I need some, like...honest motherfuckers to keep me on my toes. You are the most honest person and also the biggest motherfucker I have ever met. ”

Trevor looked at her trying to discern if that diatribe was bullshit or not. She stared back at him waiting for him to answer. He looked her up and down and let it settle in a moment before he decided that he was satisfied that she wasn't yanking his chain.

He breathed heavily through his nose.

“Fine,” he said. He moved his face closer to hers and put a finger in her face. “But if you think for one second that I'm going to stop asking questions or pissing you off to get at the answers I crave, you've got another thing coming, kid.”

Louise gave him a thin smile and a subtle eye roll.

He relaxed a little bit. “And another thing,” he continued, “if you ever throw sand at me again, you're going to wake up with a _truckload_ of that shit in your bed.”

Louise shot him a crooked, closed-mouthed smile.

“Fuck you right back,” she said quietly before breaking into a full smile and looking forward again. She sighed heavily. “I wish that you loved it here as much as I do,” she said. Trevor sat wondering if she was talking to him or to some invisible specter that only she could see before he decided to test it himself.

“Why?”

She wore a look on her face that signaled to him that she was working something out in her head, something that scared and enthralled her even though she was trying to hide it.

“Because,” she said, “if I walked out far enough or even into certain parts of that water, it would swallow me. It's so much bigger than me, but here it is, washing things away, day after day. It's predictable, you know? It's...honest. I could stay away from it, but...” she trailed off.

She looked over at him, now. She held his gaze for a moment, looking placid and contemplative, but also like she wanted for him to do or say something. He didn't know what, but he didn't have a lot of time to think about it before she turned her gaze back out toward the water.

If he hadn't had a sliver of propriety or self-awareness, he would have kissed her just then.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael and Louise spend some time together and there's a new development regarding Greg and the mobsters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a long one, very dialogue-heavy, a little expository.

Michael awoke to the sound of his phone ringing. He pulled himself up from the lumpy motel mattress, slowly. He looked at the clock. 5:37 a.m. He groped around on the night stand for his phone, which was face-down, so he couldn't see the back light. Only when he had located it did he flip on the bedside lamp, wincing as the light permeated his still sleep-hungry eyes.

He looked at his phone. It was Lester.

“Hello,” he said groggily.

“Michael, I got a possible lead on Greg Bisby,” Lester said.

“At 5:30 in the fucking morning?” Michael barked through sleep-laden vocal chords.

“It's 6:37 p.m. in the Maldives,” replied Lester, mischievously.

“It's too early for your fuckin' riddles, Lest.”

Michael heard Lester sigh impatiently on the other end.

“Go wake up Louise, I need to talk to her,” he said impatiently.

Michael wordlessly got up and pulled on a pair of pants and an oxford cloth shirt, leaving Lester on the other line before he walked out of his room and walked next door to Louise's. He pounded on the door.

“Is she there yet?” Lester asked.

“No,” said Michael flatly.

Of all the bullshit. Why couldn't he have gotten a hit at 8:30 in the morning? He pounded again. No answer. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the key to her room. He practically had to jimmy the door open, the locks on the rooms here were so outdated.

He walked into the pitch black room and carefully shuffled to where he could see the bedside alarm clock and flicked on the light. Louise was sleeping with the covers between her legs. Her face was buried in her pillow, her brown-black hair fanned out in tendrils.

He grabbed her calf and shook her leg. She stirred, but quickly settled back in. He sat on the bed next to her and rolled her over on her back by her shoulder. He hadn't had to do this since his kids were still in school.

“Fuck off. Sleep time,” she slurred.

“Get up, Lester is waiting on the line.”

Her eyes fluttered open.

“Michael,” she said flatly. “What is it?” she asked, craning her neck to look at the alarm clock.

“Lester's on the phone, he needs to talk to you.”

She groaned before holding out a stiff arm to take the phone.

“Hello?”

“Put it on speaker,” Michael demanded.

She shot him a dirty look and studied the phone for a second before she found the button.

“Go caller,” she said sleepily.

“Louise, I got a hit on Greg's credit card about twenty minutes ago. It was used at a resort in the Maldives.”

“In Asia?” she yawned.

“Yes, Louise, in Asia,” Lester replied as though he were talking to a child.

“That is _so_ somewhere he would be,” she said, still in the throws of her yawn.

“Huh?”

“Nothing,” she replied.

“It came from his SISA Platinum card. Your name is on that, right?”

“Don't you know?” she asked sarcastically.

“Well, SISA Platinum cards have a convenient security feature that allows you to suspend the activity online without a waiting period if you have a password.”

“Fuck, Lest, she doesn't _have_ a password. She's too _busy_ to bother caring about her financial information,” Michael spat.

Of course Lester had to wake him up with a useless piece of information and make him enlist the help of Louise's financially negligent ass.

“No, I know the password for _that_ one,” Louise said suddenly.

She was sitting up against the headboard now clutching Michael's phone. Michael studied her, trying to decide if she was fucking with him.

“I'm too tired to deal with bullshit, Louise,” Michael spat.

Louise glared up at him.

“It's not bullshit. That's the emergency card. I had actually forgotten about it until Lester mentioned it. We never used that thing,” she said.

Michael guffawed.

“So you just conveniently forgot about the password when we were over at Lester's house?” he asked incredulously.

Louise looked at him, not with anger, but with a kind of weary expression tinged with a smile. Her eyelids were still droopy with sleepiness.

“Michael, can you put your annoyance at Louise's fuck up aside for one second?”

 _“My_ fuck up?” Louise laughed. “You know, what fucking difference doesn't make if he didn't get a hit on it 'til now?”

“My point exactly, Louise, now give me the password, if you would, please,” Lester barked from the other end.

Louise leaned back. “All one word, all lower case” she started. She recited slowly, stopping only to yawn.

“A cuff neglectful, and thereby Ribands to flow confusedly; A winning wave, deserving note, In the tempestuous petticoat. 6795122596.”

Michael twitched about, angry and tired.

“Aw, that's fuckin' cute, Louise, really, it's poetry corner, now?” he spat, burying his face in his hands.

“Card is suspended,” Lester said.

Michael froze before turning slowly back to Louise.

“Your password is a fuckin' poem?” he asked pointedly.

Louise rolled her eyes.

“First, you get on my case 'cause I can't remember a password and then when I give you the password, it isn't to your liking. You are one fickle motherf-”

“Louise, Michael, can I get you to stop bickering for a minute?”

“Counter question,” began Louise. “Why would you want to _cancel_ the card when you're trying to monitor his activity, Lester?”

“Canceling the card is an attempt to draw him out of the foxhole, so to speak. The card's security features are a bit of a double edged sword. There's a reason that he's using it, but it's a little complicated to go into here. I do, however, have one more question for you, Louise. Did your husband use any aliases or have any nicknames that he used? I want to see if we can make contact while we have his potential location.”

Louise pondered this for a moment before rubbing her face, sleepily.

“One time, when we first moved to L.S., he almost cut his finger off with a radial arm saw and when I took him to the E.R., he gave them a fake name so that we wouldn't have to pay the bill. It was...” she said, eyes on the ceiling, searching her memory, “Carson Denslow. After our home town and his favorite director.”

“Perfect. Thank you, Louise... Michael, be nice to Louise,” said Lester.

Louise chuckled in a low voice, glaring up at Michael.

Michael rolled his eyes.

“I'll be in touch,” Lester said before abruptly hanging up the phone.

Louise dangled Michael's phone at him impudently. Michael snatched it away from her.

 

 

A half an hour later, Louise and Michael sat in a greasy spoon, sipping coffee, waiting on their orders. Michael had insisted that Louise join him even though she was more keen on going back to bed. Michael, unfortunately, had never been able to go back to sleep once he was woken up. It had been a huge bone of contention between himself and his wife.

He didn't want to putz around at that hour without someone to talk to, so he made Louise come along. He had given Louise enough time to brush her teeth and run a comb through her hair and now she sat in front of him, her eyes a little wider now, watching the cars pass by on the highway outside the window. She wore one of her signature button up dresses under a denim jacket, her hair still slightly out of place even though she had pinned the front of it to the side with a bobby pin. She looked a little less like an executive secretary from the 1950's than usual.

“Ugh, how are people already moving at this hour?” she asked bitterly.

“By doing it every day. Look at that waitress. You think she always had an easy time getting out of bed so early?” Michael replied.

Louise looked at the waitress.

“I don't know...I think she's probably been here since midnight or so. Shift change is probably coming up soon.”

“You think so?” Michael snorted.

He held his hand up to get the waitress' attention. She was a young woman, probably early thirties with pancake makeup and a sweet disposition. Her name tag read _Caralee._

“Y'all need a warm up?” she chirped.

Louise shoved her coffee cup toward the waitress, thanking her.

“Uh,” Michael started, reading the name tag, _“Caralee,_ I was wondering if you could settle a small disagreement between me and my companion.”

“Sure thing, hon,” she said, topping off his coffee. Michael leaned back in his seat and looked at Louise.

“Louise here thinks that you've been here since last night and that you're nearing the end of your shift while I think that you, industrious young lady that you are, had to force yourself outta bed at 5 a.m. to be here on time. Louise narrowed her eyes at him.

“Oh, what? She's not industrious if she got out of bed at 3 p.m. yesterday afternoon?” She leaned forward and put her elbows on the table. “Do you know what kind of people shift workers in the service industry encounter in the middle of the night, Michael? It's humanity's _B-side._ Not that that's a bad thing _always,”_ she said holding up her hands defensively. “In fact, I count the fringe among my people, but trust me, there are plenty of them that don't adhere to the norms of mainstream society, even in the most _liberal_ sense.”

Caralee snorted. “You got that right, sweetie.” She turned to Michael. “Your mistress is right, sir. I've been here since 11 p.m.,” she chirped with a wink before starting back to the kitchen.

Michael gaped.

“She's _not_ my mistress!” he called after her before looking back at Louise, who smiled at him mischievously with one eyebrow cocked at him, sipping her coffee.

“Do I get anything besides bragging rights?” she asked, setting her cup down.

 _“No,”_ he answered dryly. “Anyway, how are you so knowledgeable on the topic?”

Louise looked around, pursing her lips.

“My mom worked in a place like this when I was a kid. Except it was way more Americana than this, like, ugly pink uniforms and paper hats,” she laughed. “She worked the day shift and I had to spend every morning _before_ school and every afternoon _after_ school there with her because she couldn't leave me alone with my older brother, Johnny after he tried to set my hair on fire.”

She had said it so cavalierly.

 _“Jesus,”_ Michael said. “Your brother tried to set you on fire?”

Louise nodded, looking past him.

“He'd do it again if he had the chance.” She rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue, pretending to gag. “He's still my mother's favorite.”

She looked at Michael again.

“How did you turn out the way you did?” he asked her, shaking his head in confusion.

Louise looked at him suspiciously.

“I don't take your meaning,” she said flatly.

Michael rolled his eyes.

“You know, you're smart, you seem pretty even-keeled, you have a career...I mean, I know I'm missing some information, but it doesn't sound like you had it easy growing up. You had a homicidal brother and a mother who paid deference to him...”

Louise considered this for a minute before she shrugged.

“I don't know...I mean,” she started, thinking harder now. “I was really close with my dad. He was a truck driver, so he wasn't always around, but he was...I don't know, he was good people,” she said, smiling faintly at the table.

Michael didn't need for Louise to tell him that her dad no longer resided on this earthly plane. Her use of the past-tense and her look said it all.

“Tell me about him.”

Louise's face lit up. She probably hadn't had the opportunity to talk about him in a long time. She smiled as she looked toward the ceiling, searching her memories for the most choice ones.

“Um...Well, he was a Southern boy. His favorite human besides me was Charley Pride.” She relaxed into her seat. “He had long hair and he wore a Stetson. He helped everyone that asked him... He was funny and kind. He loved women; he said women are the most beautiful creatures on the planet and he always told me never to let any man make me feel like I was less than...”

They were quiet for a minute while Michael studied Louise, who studied the table. She didn't have a sad look on her face, more contemplative. She looked up at him.

“What about your family? What are they like?” she asked, switching gears.

Michael snorted.

“Not like yours, kid.”

Louise raised her eyebrow at him.

“I mean, I love 'em and they're making strides,” he laughed. “My wife loves yoga and tennis and shopping. My son spends a lot of time in front of his video games. My daughter's in her first year of college. Hell, she ain't doin' half bad, either. She's all but given up on her dreams of becoming a celebrity...”

“But?”

Michael searched his mind for what to say.

“But I wouldn't mind if she was a little more like you, ya know?”

Louise wore a cynical smile.

“You want her to have a failed marriage before she's thirty, working at a thankless job?”

Michael leaned in.

“I want her to be the kind of person that will be okay if she's got a failed marriage by thirty and happy at her thankless job,” he said earnestly.

Louise's eyes softened.

“Oh,” she replied quietly, averting her eyes.

Michael thought he could see her blushing and it made him smile a little bit.

“Look, Louise...” he started waiting for her to meet his eyes again. “I'm sorry I've been hard on you. I just...It's just that this isn't like any other job I've had to do. It's so disorganized, it was poorly planned...Greg is one of the most slippery people I've ever had to track down, to be honest. Besides that, I guess I've just been feeling a little, ya know, paternal. I haven't been home in a while...”

Louise looked at him with concern.

“Michael, you should go home for a while. Go see your family,” she said.

Michael snorted.

“What, and leave you alone with Trevor? Shit, Franklin's availability is limited, he's been doing a lot of side jobs for Lester. Someone needs to be around in case the teamsters find you.”

“I'm not scared of Trevor, Michael,” she said matter-of-factly.

“I retract my statement about you being even-keeled,” he said.

Louise rolled her eyes at him.

“He hasn't done anything _terribly_ untoward.”

“Yeah, but he will...”

“He's not a danger to me. We have an understanding.”

“He'll hit on you. He's been doing it since he got here. Fuck knows why, I mean they guy's never shown anything more than a passing interest in younger women since I've known him.”

“Again, Michael, he's not _that_ kind of sicko. Besides he seems to be taking his job as my protector pretty seriously. He was ready to eat you alive when you made me faint.”

 _“Easy,”_ he said.

He knew that she was ribbing him but he was still a little gun-shy from that incident.

“Go see your family.”

Michael considered it.

“Okay...I'll...”

“Michael...” she scolded.

Michael sighed, effectively ceding the point before Caralee returned with their plates.

 

 

Louise sat in Lester's creepy little base of operations yet again, mere hours after she and Michael had left the diner. Lester had called Michael saying little more than that he needed Louise at his house STAT for a conference.

Lester had graciously provided an oscillating fan for Louise this time. She nervously swiveled in the computer chair in the middle of the room while Michael and Lester whispered outside of the room, stealing glances at her. She was getting antsy now. Even though there was no pretext, she was instinctively bracing herself for bad news.

Finally, Michael strode into the room while Lester hobbled on his cane, following close behind.

“Mind telling me what's going on?” Louise asked tersely.

Lester and Michael glanced at each other briefly before turning their eyes back on her.

“Well, Louise,” Michael started, “Lester's pretty much confirmed that Greg is in the Maldives and...uh...”

He looked to Lester, who quickly jumped in.

“That alias you gave me was spot-on, Louise. I was able to locate Greg, or who I now believe to be Greg, at a resort in Kuda Huraa. See, ten years ago, the Maldives was pretty much destroyed in a Tsunami and, while they've rebuilt enough to revitalize the tourism industry, there are...infrastructure issues that have yet to be addressed, namely, their internet security,” he said, clenching and un-clenching his fist, wearing a smile that reminded Louise of a mad scientist. “Not even Greg's security consultant could control for the terrors of nature...”

“Lester?”

Lester shook off his arrogance and turned to Louise.

“Anyway, I was able to surmise that Greg has been online...”

Lester quickly hobbled over to his computer. He blocked Louise's view with his body, but she heard his desk top computer chiming. He quickly moved out of the way and off to the side, standing by Michael in a corner.

“Get over to the computer, Louise,” he hissed.

Louise was confused.

“What?” she asked, looking at him.

He urgently gestured to the computer. Louise complied, scooting over to the computer. She looked back at Lester, expecting an explanation, when suddenly the computer noises stopped. She looked at the screen, which was suddenly occupied by an image. Louise couldn't quite make out what she was looking at. It was a white room, she could see that.

Suddenly, a light flicked on on the screen and, though the image was lagging and it was a little grainy, she saw a figure stumble over to the screen.

It was...It was Greg, no doubt about it.

His dark hair was mussed from his pillow and he hadn't shaved in a while. She squinted at the computer screen. Greg, squinted back, putting his glasses on, his black eyes becoming magnified. It took a minute for it to register for him, too, it seemed. He was clad only in a pair of boxer shorts. His face dropped.

“Louise?” he asked incredulously.

Louise looked over at Lester and Michael, both of them gesturing at her to look away from them.

 _What the fuck,_ she mouthed at them before turning to the screen.

“Greg..”

“What...How...?”

The sound quality was a little bit poor. He kind of sounded like he was speaking through a voice distorter. But even with the poor sound quality, Louise could the unmistakable vocal fry tones of Lacey in the background.

“Who the hell are you talking to, Greg?” she barked.

Greg ignored her.

“Louise, I didn't accept a video chat, what are you doing on my computer screen?”

Louise snorted.

“Nice to see you, too.”

Greg turned back to Lacey off-screen, who was still grumbling at him.

“Lacey, I'm taking care of it, go back to sleep.”

Just then, Lacey appeared on screen, wearing lingerie, and shot Louise a disgusted look before stomping off. Louise heard a door slam a moment later.

Louise decided not to pull any punches, even though she would have delighted in giving her husband a healthy dose of snark for being such a fucking cliche. She had quickly realized that Lester had exploited some kind of weakness in the system, patching them into Greg's video chat and she a) didn't know how strong the connection was and b) didn't know how long it would take before Greg got skittish and shut the laptop on her.

“Greg, I'm sorry to interrupt your little vacation, but you and I have some things to discuss, so I suggest we get right to it.”

Greg stared at her and swallowed hard.

“Louise, how in the hell-”

“When you ran off, you left a huge mess behind you. There's mobsters looking for you, Greg, and that puts me in a very awkward position. So you need to get back here and straighten this out because I have a life to get back to.”

Greg looked concerned.

“Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”

Louise snorted.

“Oh, yeah, Greg,” she said sarcastically, “I'm just cherry. I'm holed up in a motel in protective custody waiting for your candy ass to come back and clean up your mess.”

Greg averted his eyes for a moment before he looked back up at her.

“It's not that simp-”

“It is _precisely_ that simple Greg. You need to come back here and reverse your casting decisions and square things with all the industry people that you pissed off before someone collects my fucking fingers as payment, okay? And while you're at it, you need to sign the fucking divorce papers because I wouldn't be in this position if you had done that in the first place.”

 _“Louise,”_ she heard Michael hiss at her.

She looked over at him. He was giving her a look that was equal parts pleading and angry.

“Who is that, Weezie?” Greg asked. “Where the hell are you, anyway?”

Louise rolled her eyes at him. _How dare he use that nickname at a time like this._

“That's neither here nor there, Greg.”

She sighed, suddenly trying to summon the patience to talk to him in an even tone, if only to placate Michael and Lester who were no doubt terrified that Louise would botch their only chance to get Greg to comply. Greg's face softened.

“I don't want to give you a divorce, Louise. You and me need to talk. I think we can fix this.”

Louise narrowed her eyes at him. _Where the hell was this coming from?_ Sure, he had been dragging his feet on this whole thing, but she had chalked it up to him being stubborn or spiteful. Now he wanted to backpedal? Had he forgotten all the ugly names he had called her? He was deluded...Louise absently picked up one of those malleable toy balls that was sitting on Lester's desk and began squeezing it ferociously.

“There's nothing to talk about, Greg! You're in a hotel room with your mistress for fucksake!”

“She's just a distraction, Louise. You walked out on _me-”_

“After I found you _screwing_ her in our bed.”

Louise winced. She wasn't doing a very good job of keeping this situation under control, not to mention that she was airing their dirty laundry in front of Lester and Michael. She rubbed the bridge of her nose, trying to stave off a headache.

“I love you, Louise. I'm sorry I've been a shit, I'm a fucking wreck, but that doesn't change how I feel about you...”

She looked up at him. She could see that he was being sincere, in so far as he believed that what he was saying was true. But she also recognized what was really going on here.

Indeed, mere days after she left him, she had missed him so much that she had to throw her car keys and her phone into the ocean to physically bar herself from contacting or crawling back to him. She took the bus to work every day for a week while she figured out how to stop missing him so damn much. But she quickly realized that what she missed, what was twisting her insides, was that she had only ever _known_ life with him, as his wife, for as long as they had been adults. She was scared of the unfamiliar, of facing a future without him. That knowledge had set her free. He might have been able to defer those feelings for a while with his distraction, but he wasn't stupid. Yeah, he was an asshole, but he had always been smart. He just needed to figure out what was eating him, as Louise had.

“If you love me, Greg,” she started trying to keep her anger from rising, “then you need to let me go. You need to get me out of this situation and you need to let me out of this marriage, okay?” she pleaded.

She was gripping the little ball tight now. Greg stared at her, wounded. Louise stared back for a moment, but she shut her eyes, suddenly feeling like she could crawl out of her skin. She inhaled deeply through her nose, trying to find some center, before she looked back up at him.

His face had quickly turned bitter. He bit his lip, angrily and shook his head at her.

“You fucking selfish bitch!” he said to her through gritted teeth.

Louise leaned back in her chair and sighed, tossing the ball back onto the desk. She shook her head as she rubbed her temple. Somewhere, deep down, she had known that it was coming. He had spoken to her pretty exclusively using the universal language of emotional abuse ever since she left.

“Greg-”

She saw his arm reach out in one swift motion before he shut the laptop on her. The screen went black. She just stared at the computer for a minute before she turned to Michael and Lester. They both looked at her pitifully, which she fucking hated. She just shrugged at them, getting up from the chair. She looked down at the floor.

“Is there anything else I can do while I'm here?” she asked sullenly.

She felt shitty. Not only because she had just had to listen to more of Greg's bullshit, something that she had been free of for almost two months, but because she felt like she had failed.

“No, Louise, not right now. Uh,” started Lester, “I think it's time to switch gears, but it will be a little while, at least a few days, before I'm ready to break any real ground.” He turned to Michael. “Michael, why don't you go ahead and take Louise to the beach or something, get her some fresh air.”

Louise looked up and shot Lester a thin but gracious smile.

“Yeah,” Michael said softly. “I think that's a good idea.”

Louise didn't look his way. She didn't want to see his disappointment in her. Suddenly, she felt like maybe he had been right to have been so hard on her. However, she thought, that was likely attributable to her embarrassment at what had just gone down.

“I'll be in touch,” Lester said.

Michael strode over to Louise and took her gently by the shoulder, leading her out of the room.

 

 

Louise and Michael sat on a bench at Del Perro Pier. The ride over there had been silent, awkward. Now they sat, watching the people walking by, making a game of guessing which ones were tourists while they ate ice cream. The mood had lightened little bit.

“Oh, yeah, those are mid-westerners,” Michael said.

Louise was finally smiling.

“Mmm,” she said swallowing some ice cream, nodding at a middle-aged couple coming out of one of the diners. “What about them?”

Michael looked in the direction she was gesturing at.

“Pacific Northwest, most likely. See how they protect themselves against the sun? They probably haven't seen it in forty years.”

Louise chuckled. They sat quiet for a minute. Louise was still uneasy about what had happened back at Lester's.

“I'm sorry, Michael,” she said, suddenly serious.

He looked over at her, but she stared straight ahead.

“Sorry for what?” he said.

She shrugged.

“You know, for botching that thing with Greg. I lost my cool...”

“Hey,” he started firmly. She looked over at him. “That wasn't your fault, okay? You did _fine_. Christ, if anyone should be apologizing, its me and Lest. We shouldn't have sprung that on you.”

They were quiet again for a moment.

“It had to happen some time,” she said under her breath.

Michael shifted in his seat.

“And you know what? Fuck Greg. Where does _he_ get off callin' _you_ names, huh? You've been nothing but graceful about all this and there he his makin' demands...”

Louise's heart felt like it had just grown two sizes. She wasn't exactly used to people defending her decision to dissolve the marriage. Michael was being downright sweet right now, which was funny in a twisted way, given the fact that he had kidnapped her just over a week before.

Just as Louise was getting ready to acknowledge him for that, his phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and looked at her.

“It's Solomon,” he said. He answered the phone quickly. “Solomon...Yeah, yeah, she's fine, she's right here as a matter of fact...Uh huh,” he said, wiping his mouth. He sat still for a moment before he stood up from the bench. Louise looked up at him. “Is that so?...Uh huh...” He sighed. “Yeah...Sure...I understand, sir...Okay...Right.”

He hung up the phone. Michael looked down at her with a look of pity again. The look went straight to Louise's gut, and she instinctively turned to the trash can and threw the remainder of her ice cream in it before looking back to Michael.

“What is it?”

“Louise...”

“Spit it out,” she said brusquely.

“Greg got in contact with someone from the industry and let's just say...He's not being compliant.”

Louise slumped down and dragged her hand down her face, slowly.

“And?”

“And...Solomon was calling to tell me that, uh...”

She looked up at him imploringly. His face was slack.

“Go on...”

“Those teamster guys...They made a direct threat on your life. They're green lighting you by name until Greg turns up.”

Louise's heart jumped into her throat.

She knew the argot of the underworld. Not because she had a wealth of experience in that world, but she had worked in the film industry long enough to know that _green light_ was a term that wasn't used exclusively in the movie business.

She breathed heavily, shakily. Michael knelt down in front of her and looked in her eyes.

“Hey,” he said.

“It's gonna be okay, alright? Me and Trevor and Franklin? We've dealt with people like this before. We ain't gonna let anything happen to ya.”

Louise closed her eyes and breathed in deep.

Yeah, sure, she had known that Solomon had less-than-selfish intentions in having her kidnapped, even though she hadn't wanted to admit it. But before it had been more of an abstraction, a cover-your-ass type of arrangement. Shit was getting real now.

Louise looked at Michael and nodded, as much for herself as for him. She needed to signal to herself that she was putting her trust in him and in Franklin, and yes, even in Trevor.

“Good girl,” Michael said.

Louise's mind immediately jumped to the motel, that cramped, isolated space that she had been calling her haven for the past week.

“Michael, I don't know if I can stand to be cooped up in that room, I mean-”

“We're not going to coop you up, okay? But, uh,” he started, looking around suspiciously, “we need to keep you out of the city for the time being.”

Louise allowed herself to be satisfied with that assurance. They sat quietly.

“You're not going to use this as an excuse to avoid your family are you?” she quipped, trying to deflect some of her own fear.

Michael beamed up at her.

“Are you going to let me?”

“No,” she said flatly. “Besides, it's probably not the best idea for you to hang out too much with two of your known associates before this blows over, right?”

Michael shot her a look of surprise.

“You should have gotten into the game, Louise. Street smarts like yours?” he clucked.

“Yeah, right.”

Michael's smile faded.

“Well, I am going to have to put it on hold for a few days, but I'll head home when I feel like things are okay,” he assured her. “My wife's been patient up to this point, but that has a way of turning on a dime,” he quipped.

He stood up and Louise took that to mean that it was time to go. He let her lead the way back to the car, trailing a few steps behind.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The motley bunch decides to go on an outing, but naturally it is not as laid back as they would have hoped, chiefly because Louise runs into a ghost from her past and, because she's not exactly enjoying a winning-streak in her life, she is left humiliated.

Louise hanged her arm out of the window of the car, tracing waves in the air, feeling the wind whip past the skin on her arm. It was nice to be out of the motel. Sure, it was sort of twisted that she was on a recreational outing with the three men that were, for all intents and purposes, holding her captive (she didn't care about the protection clause of the arrangement or about her own complicity), but things were getting confused and she decided that instead of expending all her time and energy trying to make herself small, to architect a more appropriate dynamic, she was just going to embrace the weirdness, if only for this evening.

Besides, she needed to forget about the news that she had had a direct threat made on her from the guys that wanted her husband to bend to their whims.

The four of them didn't know where they were going, exactly, but the cabin fever was palpable, so they just hit the road, game for anything. About twenty minutes later, they pulled up to a little roadside bar along the coast. They all got out of the car and strode toward the entrance.

It was a weird little place. It had obviously been quite the little seaside dive at one point, but someone had come and refurbished it, no doubt to accommodate the increasingly hip aesthetic of this part of San Andreas.

“Ugh, if we're going to get shit housed, we oughta do it in a proper bar,” whined Trevor.

“Who said we're getting shit housed, T? We're just popping in to have a drink. If it's not to your taste, we can go somewhere else after.”

There was live music coming from inside the bar. The music sounded vaguely familiar, but she couldn't quite place it. A strange mix of country and indie rock that, realistically, wasn't all that strange anymore. Another piece of the San Andreas aesthetic tapestry. That was until she looked down at the sandwich board out front, stopping dead in her tracks as she did.

_Live Music Tonite_

_Johnny Cataract and Isabelle Faust_

_8pm_

Those very words almost made her jump out of her skin. She just stood in front of the board, staring at it, her heart doing flips in her chest. Franklin was the first to notice that she had stopped walking toward the entrance.

“What's up?” The other two men stopped now and looked back at her.

“Nothing,” she said tersely.

All three of the men stared at her quizzically now, exchanging glances between them.

“Oh, God, don't tell me that you're a teetotaler, Lou. If that's the case, I'm going to have to feed you to the fuckin' sharks.”

She shot Trevor a dirty look.

 _“No,_ I drink. It's just...” she said considering the sign further, “You're right, Trevor, this place sucks ass. We should go find a better place.”

She tried to come off as flip as possible. Michael rolled his eyes.

“This is our place. It's convenient, it's probably clean, and I can probably get a decent whiskey here, now let's go.”

They all stared at her, waiting for her to move, but Louise held her position steadfastly before Trevor threw up his hands, sighed and walked over to her.

She squealed and cursed as he cavalierly threw her over his shoulder and headed for the entrance.

“Put me down,” she whined.

“Not until you have a drink in front of you,” she said, slapping her hard on the ass.

“Ow, goddammit!”

Louise didn't get to take in this new space like a normal person, instead experiencing it backwards. The music that she now recognized fully blared at the back of her head before Trevor rounded a corner into the bar proper. He finally set her down.

Louise looked around. The crowd was decent, though not overwhelming. She scanned the room, gazing on the tiny sea of people her age and younger, noting how conspicuous Michael and Trevor looked suddenly. Franklin already had a drink in his hand and it looked as though he was chatting up the cute redhead behind the bar, who was obviously enjoying his attention. She couldn't see Trevor from where she stood because he was on the other side of Michael, who was rolling his eyes and impatiently tapping his credit card against the bar while he waited for Franklin to let the bartender serve him.

Finally, she decided not to delay the inevitable and looked toward the stage to see two familiar figures: a man with a pork pie hat and patchy facial hair stood at the front watching his fretting hand as he sang while a strawberry blonde sat at a drum set, banging the drums and singing about five times more enthusiastically than her male companion. _That hasn't changed_.

She looked at the woman, Isabelle, who aside from having grown her hair out, looked as bright-eyed and exuberant she had back when...

Michael arrived at her side, breaking her concentration on the duo, handing her a drink.

“I guessed gin and tonic. Was I right?” he said, shouting into her ear over the music.

She turned to him and nodded, trying to feign enthusiasm before turning back to the stage. Without her realizing, she had begun fidgeting, but Michael noticed and leaned toward her again.

“Do you not like crowds or something?” he shouted.

Louise sighed and turned to him. She knew that there was no way that she could tell him what was bothering her, so she just said

“I'm fine.” She scanned the bar one more time before she saw a pool table in a darkened corner. “I wanna play pool,” she shouted.

 

Thirty five minutes later, the four of them were fully immersed in a doubles game of pool, Michael and Louise against Franklin and Trevor. Louise was keeping them ahead. She had always been pretty good at pool, having learned from her dad at an early age, and now that they were here, she tried to focus on the game so that she wouldn't have to focus on the headliners of the evening.

 _“Damn!”_ exclaimed Franklin as Louise sunk her second to last ball in the corner pocket. She stood up straight and nervously twirled her pool stick as she had been for the better part of the game, stealing glances toward the stage to gauge whether or not she had been spotted by either member of the musical duo.

“Well, hot damn! Classy cakes knows how to handle a stick,” Trevor chuckled. “What other surprises do you have for us, sweets?”

_If you only knew that one of my surprises was hovering dangerously close to us, Trevor dear._

“It's in the bag, Louise, take the last shot,” Michael said.

Louise banked the last ball into a center pocket.

“Atta girl!” crowed Michael, squeezing her on the shoulder. He sighed with relief. “Alright, I'm done embarrassing myself for the evening. Pool never was my game.”

Louise turned to him.

“But I'm just getting warmed up! One more game!”

“No, Louise,” he replied.

“Yeah, I don't need to have my ass handed to me again, Louise. A man's gotta retain some pride,” Franklin said.

“As much as I _love_ seeing you bent over a table, I'm ready to sit down and finish getting housed,” Trevor agreed.

Just then, Johnny Cataract announced that their set had come to an end. And enthusiastic round of applause followed. Louise's heart jumped. She swallowed hard and looked over to where Michael and Franklin were returning their sticks to the wall-mounted rack while Trevor haphazardly threw his back onto the table.

“Can we sit somewhere dark?” Louise asked without thinking.

Trevor cocked an eyebrow at her and growled.

“Lou, I appreciate that you're feeling the romance, but maybe you should wait until we're alone before you start laying it on so thick.”

Louise rolled her eyes and said “I have a headache, Trevor.”

“That's what they all say,” he said drolly.

“That's fine, Louise,” Michael said without questioning her.

He pointed to an unoccupied booth in a darkened corner of the bar.

“We'll sit over there.”

The four started making their way with Louise bringing up the rear. Michel split from the group to make a stop at the bar for another round of drinks. Louise was startled by his deviation, starving for control over the situation. She realized that she had almost been imaging herself choreographing the rest of their time at the bar, riding on the wave of success from the instigation of the pool game. She had broken stride and was now shuffling through the crowd when suddenly she caught a whiff of something familiar.

Raspberry and nutmeg and weed. It enveloped her senses just as she saw Isabelle stride past her. She wore striped shorts and a denim button-up shirt. Her long strawberry blonde hair was half-up in a hair clip.

She didn't see Louise. _Good._ Louise hastily made her way to the dark booth.

She slid in next to Trevor and turned her whole upper body to him so as to avoid detection. Trevor noticed and shot her a wry smile.

“Well, if I'da known that all I had to do get you to cozy up next to me _willingly_ was a buy you couple of drinks, I could have saved myself a lot of guess work,” he said.

Louise grimaced and faced forward, shielding her face with her hand instead.

“You doin' okay?” Franklin asked.

Louise's mind was elsewhere but when she noticed him eyeing her suspiciously, she realized that he was addressing her.

“I'm fine, just a little headache,” she said.

She saved face by pretending to massage her temple with the hand with which she was concealing herself. Michael walked up with a tray of drinks just then.

“Christ,” he set setting down the tray. “What am I a cocktail waitress?” he quipped.

Louise put down the urge to say something about his outmoded belief that a woman should be giving him table service in a bar. She took her drink off the tray and sucked down a quarter of it before the rest of them took theirs. Trevor chuckled.

“You are really letting your hair down tonight, Louise,” he said. He sounded sincere.

“I guess I didn't realize how bored I was sitting in that motel,” she said blankly.

“Oh, what, we're boring to you?” Michael asked in a mock-offended tone.

She barely had time to answer before...

 _“Weez?”_ came a female voice.

The voice was a familiar high-pitched but not squeaky one. She hesitated before she turned to face the owner of that voice. _Fuck. I thought I was in the clear._ She looked up to see that strawberry blonde gawking at her. She stared for a moment.

“Hey, Izzy,” she said softly.

Isabelle shuffled over to her.

“How long have you been here?” she asked, eyes wide with disbelief.

“We just got here,” Louise shrugged.

Her ability to bullshit came but once in a while, but tonight it was on point. She could feel her companions staring at her, but she didn't dare look at them. She locked eyes with Isabelle as she stood.

Isabelle guffawed.

“Well, you missed our set,” she said in her faint country drawl.

Her voice was so tender, so innocent. Isabelle had a way of making you feel like you had slighted her in the most mundane of ways. That way about her was kryptonite for Louise as she suspected it had been for many.

“I'm sorry, I didn't know you were playing. We just wandered in here,” Louise said.

Isabelle looked past her at the three men seated at the booth. She smiled politely.

“Hi,” she said.

Louise shook her head.

“I'm sorry...” She turned to the men. “Isabelle, this is Trevor, Franklin, and Michael. Guys, this is Isabelle.”

Franklin and Michael waved a little in acknowledgment while Trevor just sat with one eyebrow raised. All three wore confused expressions. She knew what they were thinking. _Why hadn't she told them that she knew this person before and why was she now lying about how long they had been there?_ Thankfully, though, they were savvy enough not to blow her cover. They knew something was up and she knew that they, or at least Trevor, would take pains to drag the truth out of her later.

“Well, while you're here, would it be okay if I had a drink with you? It's been awhile,” Isabelle said.

“Yes,” said Trevor emphatically before Louise had a chance to.

Louise shot him a look before she turned to Isabelle and smiled.

“Yeah, pull up a chair, Izzy,” she said.

“Alright,” Isabelle nodded. “I'm gonna go cash in my drink token and I'll be right back,” she said, her gaze lingering on Louise for a moment before she turned on her heel and made her way to the bar.

Louise sat back down, exasperated and squeezed the bridge of her nose.

“What the hell was that all about,” Franklin asked, dropping the characteristic gentleness with which he had handled Louise up to this point. “How do you know her?”

Louise's eyes felt heavy all of a sudden. She had a hard time opening them to shoot a glance at each of her companions to gauge their reactions.

“She's an old friend,” Louise said.

“If she's your friend, then why do you look like you want to make a run for it?” asked Michael.

Just then, Isabelle came over with a drink in one hand, dragging a chair with the other and plopped down at the head of the table. She quickly swept Louise's “friends” with her eyes before training her gaze on Louise. Louise stared at her drink for a minute before she looked up at Isabelle, whose eyes were bright and inquiring. She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear.

“So, how do y'all know each other?” she chirped.

If the jukebox hadn't been playing, you could hear a pin drop at that table. _Jesus,_ thought Louise. _These guys could probably rob a bank with their eyes closed, but coming up with a palatable lie is not their forte_.

“They work at the school with me,” Louise said. “Yeah, Michael teaches civics, Franklin teaches economics, and Trevor...He teaches phys ed.”

Franklin and Michael snorted while Trevor glared at Louise, but Isabelle didn't seem to notice.

“How's that goin', Weez?”

“It's good. This year was even better than last year,” said Louise, nodding.

“Where's Greg?” asked Isabelle.

Louise couldn't read her face to find what she was searching for. Perhaps she really was interested in his whereabouts for perfectly innocent reasons, though Louise doubted it. She chewed on the question quickly, trying to divine the best possible answer. But she knew that if conversations had been marshes, she would be a sitting duck right now. The guys at the table already knew that she was hiding something.

“Greg and I are...We're not speaking right now, Iz. We're getting a divorce,” she said.

_Might as well lay it on the line._

Isabelle was again wearing an ambiguous expression.

“I'm real sorry to hear that,” she said softly, practically whispering. She averted her eyes.

The table fell silent for a moment. True to form, Trevor was the first to break the silence.

“How do _you two_ know each other?” he asked, pointing between them.

Louise looked over to him. He was wearing his best poker face, but it was shit. She could see the glint in his eye. Thank fuck Isabelle didn't know him or the awkwardness might have been dialed to eleven.

Louise swallowed hard, suddenly looking to Isabelle for an answer. Isabelle, who had been demanding answers from her since she had sat down at that table. Now Isabelle stared back at her, daring her to answer truthfully.

“I told you, Trevor, we're old friends,” answered Louise, not taking her eyes off of Isabelle.

Isabelle, for her part, dropped her eyes to the table. She was disappointed. Or bitter. Or both. She lifted her eyes to meet Louise, letting her face curl into a sudden smile.

“Yeah, great friends,” she said. _Shit._ “Two peas in a pod, right Louise?”

Louise let her gaze drift over to Franklin and Michael. Franklin's hand covered his mouth. Not in a mocking way, but in a way that told Louise that he was waiting intently for some kind of resolution. Michael looked between the two women, tracing the rim of his whiskey glass with his finger.

“Yeah,” answered Louise. She was hyper-aware of her own tone, which feel somewhere between brusque and tenuous.

Isabelle planted her tongue in her cheek, smiling now, shaking her head at Louise.

“We get along so famously, in fact...” she started, “that we spent over a month in my bed while her husband was in Greece!”

Louise's stomach dropped with the force of the bomb that Isabelle had just dropped on the group of souls seated at that booth. She felt a lump in her throat, strangling her suddenly. She looked down at the table for lack of a better idea of how to respond. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she looked up at Michael and Franklin whose eyes were identically wide. Louise, who had been fiddling with her necklace, abruptly stuck the pendant in her mouth and bit down on it, hard.

And as if she weren't already praying for the ground to open up and swallow her where she sat, a song came on over the jukebox, only serving to add to her agony. She looked at Isabelle, who seemed to be reading her mind. Isabelle smiled gently.

“You recognize this song?” she asked after a few measures.

Louise sat with her hands in front of her on the table, fingers interlaced. She stared at her hands and twiddled her thumbs, still biting her pendant, but otherwise, she was frozen.

“Yeah, I know you probably think that some cruel power greater than yourself decided to swaddle you in a black cloud today, but actually, I queued this song up on the jukebox while I was grabbing my drink,” she said flatly.

Louise stirred uncomfortably.

 

_Mmm, you're so pretty_

_Not to talk to you would be a crime_

 

“Do you want me to tell your friends what happened while this song was playing, Louise?” she asked coldly, leaning on her elbows in a flagrant effort to invade Louise's space.

The worst was about to come, charging at her like a freight train...Her mind was blank. She tried to think of a way to pull herself out of this hole that she had fallen into. She let the cold little piece of metal fall out of her mouth.

“Izzy-”

“This song,” Isabelle stated gruffly, “was playing when Louise and I were making love one night.”

“Isabelle, if there's something you want to talk about in private-” Louise began, partly mumbling, partly whispering as if the others couldn't hear her.

Isabelle quickly cut her off.

“And right...about...here,” Isabelle continued, waiting for the song to catch up to her story...Everyone at the table was rapt, except for Louise, who knew what Isabelle was about to say. She wanted to cover Izzy's mouth or punch her, anything to stop the train.

 

_Ah, won't you come around to my place_

_Just wanna use up a little of your time_

 

“That's where I gave her an orgasm so intense that she blacked out.”

Louise grimaced before she buried her face in her hands. She had known it was coming but she didn't realize how crass it would sound coming out of Isabelle's mouth. She didn't need to look at the others to see what kind of reaction Isabelle was getting out of them. She could feel their eyes on her.

_Silence. Sighing. Murmuring._

“Bullshit,” Trevor spat suddenly. Louise quickly looked at him and then at Isabelle, who looked at him inquisitively. Louise buried her face again as if it would protect her from the emotional shrapnel raining down on her. “Louise would have told me if she had a Sapphic side.”

Louise pulled her face out of her hands and looked over at Trevor again. She didn't know if he was trying to defend her or if he really was trying to rationalize her failure to reveal this information to him earlier. Of course, she knew that what he was saying was absurd even if he didn't know it himself. But Trevor wore everything on his sleeve. She knew that if he had allowed himself to accept what Isabelle had said, he would have reacted with something other than denial, denial which she now envied.

“Oh, yeah?” Isabelle asked, suddenly extracting a phone from her pocket. A couple of quick flicks was all it took. “Then explain this, cowboy,” she said handing him the phone.

She did so over Louise's head so that she couldn't see what was on the screen. Trevor snatched it from her. Louise didn't have time to react. He peered at the screen, moving his head back to get an eye full before his eyebrows shot up.

Louise was no longer frozen. Her discomfort, her anguish at this whole situation had reached a fever pitch. She reached for the phone but Trevor reflexively pulled it away from her. She got up on her knees on the booth and reached over him, trying to get at it. She fell into him, crushing his head into the nape of her neck. His arms were so long that she had to use his shoulder to hoist herself up. She didn't look at Michael and Franklin, though she guessed that they were bemused at the sight of these two behaving like pre-adolescents.

Finally, she gripped the phone and, while he was strong, she had self-preservation on her side. She collapsed back into her seat, holding the phone. It took her a moment to comprehend what she was looking at.

She hardly recognized herself in the picture, but soon, her brain allowed her to grasp what she was seeing. It was a photo of Louise lying down, topless, covering her breasts with her arm with a joint hanging out of her mouth. The Louise in the picture smiled coyly. Even though it was candid, she was smoldering up at the photographer, Isabelle. The perfect pictorial representation of their tryst. She dropped the phone on the table as if it had just released retractable spikes. She pointed at it.

“What the _fuck_ , Izzy?” she said. “You _kept_ that? _What the fuck?”_

She stabbed at the screen with her finger trying to find a way to delete the picture, but she was woefully unfamiliar with the device. Michael and Franklin simultaneously leaned over to look but Louise acted fast and jerked it back up off of the table, clutching it to her chest. Isabelle glared at her, arms crossed.

“You wanna pretend that what happened didn't happen, Weez? That's just fine.” Her voice was quiet and cold. “But I don't ever wanna forget that you left me alone just as soon as your prick of a husband came grovelin' to you,” she said. Her face tightened. “That's why I kept it.”

She held out her hand to Louise. Louise stared at her, scowling defensively. She had long suspected that she had left Isabelle feeling less than content about what had happened between them, but she didn't think that it was this heavy. No, she had been blissfully unaware that she had hurt this girl. She had been too wrapped up in hers and Greg's bullshit and she had cast Isabelle aside in favor of a modicum of normalcy.

She slowly handed the phone over to Isabelle, who took it gently from her hand, instead of snatching it as Louise had anticipated.

“Isabelle-”

“Save it, Louise,” she spat.

She abruptly got out of her seat and stiffly walked out of the bar. They all watched her walk out. Louise turned back toward the table. She could feel the pained expression on her face. She didn't look up at Michael and Franklin. It only took a minute before Trevor piped up.

“Well, that answered most of my questions. Unfortunately, she fucking _left_ before I could get her to send me that picture...”

Louise popped the pendant back into her mouth. She didn't have it in her at that moment to be angry at Trevor for the jab. Finally, though, she couldn't take it. She couldn't stand sitting there in the aftermath of having yet another one of her very personal affairs placed out on display. That was to say nothing of how shitty she now felt knowing that Isabelle had been so deeply hurt.

Sure, it was not cool what she had just done, humiliating her to get one up on her, but she was right. Louise had abruptly ended their affair once Greg had come back from his trip, giving her some stodgy explanation of why he had left. He said that it was work-related, but Louise knew better. Greg couldn't handle her state of bereavement anymore after her father had passed. He was a champ until about three months in when he started talking about having her placed in a _facility._ That was Vinewood for you. You could pay to put someone up in a cushy recovery center, but no amount of money could buy patience.

When she had refused, he had jetted off with little more than a kiss on the cheek and the request that she take a sleeping pill that night. Two nights after he left, Louise wandered into a bar in West Vinewood and that's where she met Isabelle. Isabelle, who had listened to her, had let her cry, had let her express all of her doubts about her marriage. Isabelle who had indeed gotten Louise off so expertly that she lost her vision for about ten seconds. Isabelle who, with her faint but audible North Carolina accent had felt like all the good parts of home.

Louise locked in on the shot of amber liquor still waiting on the tray. She didn't know whose or what it was but she downed it before wordlessly getting up from the table and going outside to see if she could find Isabelle.

She walked outside. It was dark now. She could hear the tide and the rush of traffic on the highway. She looked around the parking lot for Isabelle or her car. She wandered around back and there, under a bright light near some cement steps, was Isabelle leaned against her car.

She was taking a hit off of a pipe. Louise could smell the weed from where she stood. She slowly shuffled toward Isabelle, waiting for her to see her so that if she was going to tell her to _fuck off_ , she could do it before she was within swinging distance.

Isabelle slowly blew out the smoke and glanced over to Louise. They were alone back here. Louise got close enough to see Isabelle's face. She had obviously been crying a little bit. That hit Louise right in the gut.

“Isabelle...” she choked out.

Isabelle walked toward her, stopping about two feet in front of her. She smacked the resin from her pipe into her palm before brushing it off on her pants and sliding the pipe into her breast-pocket. She looked at Louise now.

“You know, it was fine that you went back to him. Hell, I was expecting it,” she laughed humorlessly before her face fell into a pained scowl. “What got me was that you didn't even talk to me about it. You just gave me an Irish goodbye. That fucking hurt, Weez.”

Louise stared back at her. She could feel her face twisted into a pathetic expression and she wanted to fix that, but she didn't know what the appropriate face was in this situation.

“I know,” Louise replied quietly. “I mean, I guess I didn't know then, but...”

Isabelle smiled faintly at her before she took Louise's chin in one of her hands and stroked her cheek.

“If you were anyone else, I would call bullshit, you know that?” she said quietly. Louise reached up and put her hand over Isabelle's.

“God, you are even more beautiful now than you were then, Weez,” she whispered.

That statement amplified the sweet warmth that radiated Louise's body from Isabelle's touch. She had been thinking the very same about Isabelle. She looked over her face, at her blue eyes, at her button nose.

“Are you seeing anyone?” Louise asked. Suddenly, though she regretted it. She knew that it sounded like a come-on even though she was actually fishing for something that would make her feel less shitty, something that would vicariously absolve her.

“No one like you,” Isabelle responded immediately.

Louise had, by now, forgotten the three men she had left sitting inside. It was quiet between the two women for a moment. Isabelle slowly retracted her hand but kept her eyes on Louise.

“I've been drinking,” Louise said, not knowing what else to say.

Isabelle's very presence was sapping her conversational skills. Isabelle smirked.

“Are those guys really teachers?” she asked, ignoring the disclosure.

“No,” Louise laughed. She didn't want to lie anymore. “They're...complicated.”

That answer seemed to satisfy Isabelle, somehow.

“So, what now, Louise?” she said, her face now betraying some inquisition. Louise considered the question. It was a simple one, but there wasn't a simple answer.

“I don't know. I kind of thought that after what happened in there, I would come out and you would clock me or something,” she said, smiling. “That's as far as I got in the planning phases.”

Isabelle averted her eyes.

“I'm sorry about that. I shouldn't have humiliated you. I was just sore that I didn't get a proper goodbye out of you, I guess,” she sighed. “I didn't even realize it until I saw you sitting there,” she said sheepishly.

Louise instinctively reached out and began stroking Isabelle's arm before gently combing her fingers through her hair. She felt like she had no control here, but it wasn't scary for once. It was kind of nice. Delayed reaction seemed to be a wont that they shared because Louise hadn't realized that she had been aching for this kind of touch for awhile. At least since she had moved out of the house that she and Greg had shared.

She and Isabelle had had chemistry. Not long ago, she would have found this to be ideal, somehow. A warm body to fall asleep next to every night? _Shit, sold._ She would have figured that they could learn to be together in a healthy way, to build something up from the destruction that they had wrought, on each other, on Louise's marriage. But as much as it hurt, she knew that their chemistry wasn't enough to make them cohesive, not by a long shot. They brought out the hedonistic side in one another, the base, the animal. They didn't challenge each other intellectually or creatively. Besides, Louise's life was a messy enough. She wasn't about to try to rope Isabelle into it.

“So say goodbye now,” Louise said softly.

Isabelle looked up at her. She stared at Louise intently for a minute before taking a step forward. She took Louise's face in her hands and there they stood in the copper light, with passing cars and ocean tides providing the soundtrack to their goodbye kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, poor, poor Louise. Girlfriend doesn't get to have even a shred of the privacy that she so craves. Ugh. I don't know, that shit that Isabelle pulled was not cool, but I kind of like her regardless. Lemme know what you think, yeah?


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trevor and Louise try to figure out where they stand where the other is concerned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think that this was one of my favorite chapters to write so far. It pretty well showcases the oddball dynamic between these two crazy (in their own unique ways) people. I hope you like :)

Four days had passed since the incident at the bar. In that four days, none of the guys had pitched Louise any shit, not even Trevor. Either it was a show of mercy or they knew that there was no exploring left to do on the topic of Louise's extra-marital affair.

“ERGH,” came a familiar, angry growl from the corner. It was so familiar, in fact, that nobody even flinched when Trevor came stomping over to where Louise, Michael, and Franklin were seated at the card table playing a hand of gin.

“That is such bullshit, Lou! We all know that you peeked, now just tell us what kind of documents you shredded for that old bastard!”

Trevor had, until a moment ago, been listening quietly to Louise insist to a curious Michael and Franklin that no, she really had no idea what kinds of documentation she had dutifully dispensed with at her former boss's request.

Michael and Franklin exchanged glances but Louise kept her eyes on her cards.

“I really don't know, Trevor,” she said flatly.

She didn't know why they had been so curious anyway. They were career criminals, after all. What was a few dead trees fed through electronic serrated office equipment to them, anyway?

“Tell me, Lou. Tell me or I am going to get very angry very fast,” said Trevor through gritted teeth.

Louise snorted.

 _“The Trevor_ is always very angry.”

“Fuck!”

Louise slammed her cards down, but quickly put down her frustration enough to look up at him slowly.

In an even tone, she said “Even if I had _peeked,_ what in the hell makes you think that I could comprehend all that legalese, anyway?”

 _“A ha!”_ Trevor cried, without missing a beat. “How would you know it was all legalese if you didn't peek?”

Louise rolled her eyes. She picked up her cards again.

“Because anyone who's worked at a movie studio for five minutes will tell you that at any given time there are more lawyers there than actors, directors, producers, boom operators, camera men, and caterers combined. It was an educated guess.”

Trevor's shoulders slumped and his voice got low suddenly, though he still had fire in his eyes as he stared down at her.

“Is this really how you want to kick off our alone time, Louise? By being cagey?”

He wasn't being cute. It was obvious to Louise that his patience with her had actually worn very thin. Some kind of switch had been flipped in the last few days. Louise had grown exponentially more comfortable in her own skin and when Trevor pushed her buttons, she had started pushing back. The dynamic had shifted. She wasn't their mousy little captive, walking on egg shells anymore. Furthermore, she could have easily left by now. They all knew that, but she hadn't because as much as she had been putting up resistance to the whole situation, she was scared to return to her home, of the green light. She was scared that if she didn't play ball, she or Greg or Sol would end up in an even more compromising position and she didn't want that responsibility.

The trouble had really started when Louise had candidly expressed her befuddlement at Trevor's affinity for _Impotent Rage._ She had taken the hard stance that the character's unchecked rage was not an adequate linchpin for character development and she couldn't identify with him at all as he was too one-dimensional. Trevor had countered that, _of course_ she couldn't understand because she spent her days teaching kids to _scribble their rage_ instead of acting on it.

Yet another argument had broken out when, while she and Franklin were watching internet videos on Franklin's phone, Trevor had asked what Louise thought was so funny. When she failed to answer him, being rapt with the video and all, he snatched the phone and saw that they were watching videos of babies eating lemons. He quickly decried it as stupid, and Louise immediately went on the defensive as both of them could have predicted. Things had quickly gone downhill from there.

Michael spoke up just then, clearly at the end of his rope.

“Trevor, leave it alone.” He set down his cards and stood up, putting a finger in Trevor's face before continuing. “I'm not terribly fond of the prospect leaving you two here alone together. I don't want to come back and find that you've strangled each other, okay? The last few days have been a test run, but every time I come back into this room, Louise is either giving you the silent treatment or the two of you are going at it again.” He put down his hand and turned to Louise. “Unfortunately, this is the only viable option. I've got to get back to Amanda before she leaves me again and meet with Solomon to discuss how to get over this little plateau. Franklin has some jobs to do for Lester.”

Franklin leaned back, shaking his head. Louise could tell that he wasn't comfortable with this arrangement, either.

“So,” Michael continued, “while we're away, you two will find a way to get along, you understand?”

He spoke as though he was addressing two children that couldn't play nice. And in a way, he was, except that they weren't children.

“Fine,” Louise said flatly.

Trevor didn't respond. Michael looked at his watch.

“You ready to get this show on the road, Frank?” Franklin looked uneasily between Louise and Trevor before giving a defeated shrug in response.

“Yeah, I guess,” he said, getting up from his place at the table.

The pair walked to the door. Michael turned toward them before walking out.

“I'll be calling periodically to check on you. If you don't answer, I'm going to assume the worst. Don't give me a reason to come back prematurely,” he said sternly.

 

 

After about eight hours, the animus from Trevor and Louise's bickering had faded some. They sat on the bed together watching _Impotent Rage._ Louise hadn't put up much of a fight, deciding to cede the victory of the T.V. wars to Trevor if only to defer the headache that was threatening to rear its ugly head if Trevor raised his voice to her again. It was made more tolerable by the fact that she now had a sketch pad and she distracted herself with that while Trevor contentedly kept his eyes on the T.V.

She took the opportunity to sketch his face. She hadn't seen him sit so still up to this point and he was definitely a good subject considering all the lines and scars he had.

Trevor had put himself into her good graces somewhat by making a trip to her house to retrieve more of her things. Specifically, she had requested more underwear, the sketch book and graphite pencils, reading material (any reading material), and her Waterpik. She had half-expected for him to come back with a bag full of useless items that she hadn't requested just to spite her, but if the proclivity had been there, he didn't act on it.

She observed his eyes lids drooping a little bit. She couldn't tell if he was tired or bored or both, but it had made it so that she had to resort to rendering his wild eyes from memory.

He lazily turned over on his side and looked into her lap at the sketch pad.

“You, uh, want me to strip down for ya, Lou?” he chuckled sleepily. “You could really capture my essence that way.”

Louise thought better of taking the bait. She didn't look up at him, concentrating on adding lighter values to the sketch. She just coughed in response.

“I'll take that as a maybe,” he said dryly. “I bet if I was Isabelle you would take me up on the offer.”

 _Oh, great,_ she thought. _The ceasefire has ended._

“Why are you bringing that up now?” she asked him flatly. He chuckled softly.

“Oh, I don't know. Maybe because Michael's not here and you're boring me to tears with your cold shoulder bullshit. I gotta get a rise out of you somehow.”

Louise impulsively grabbed the sketchbook on either side, raised it, and swatted Trevor hard in the chest with it. He jumped instinctively and peered up at her with fire in his eyes.

 _Maybe that wasn't the best idea,_ she thought. She stared back at him trying to hide her sudden trepidation.

“Satisfied?” she asked coolly, still eyeing him suspiciously, waiting for him to respond.

He broke into a devilish smile.

 _“Feisty one,”_ he said, his voice steeped in mischief.

He shot up and moved to the foot of the bed, grabbing hold of both her legs, pulling her down from a seated position to a supine one, pulling a yelp from her. He pounced on her then, pinning her arms above her head. He did so gently, deliberately leaving enough give so that she could slip out from under him if she wanted to. He hovered over her face with his now.

Her heart was pounding. She knew that he was just playing, but she also knew that this was pure exploitation. He didn't have any intention of hurting her, she knew he wasn't that kind of a monster. But he wanted for her to call his bluff. Or not. He wanted for her to act, to send a tacit but clear message about what she was doing here with him, what they had been doing over the past couple of weeks that they had known each other.

She couldn't blame him for trying to figure it out. She was being stodgy again, and on purpose, mostly. Because she didn't know what she was doing there, either. She didn't know why she had taken the bait when he started what could have been a friendly little game of let's get under one another's skin to see what we're made of; friendly, that is, if he hadn't been such a loose cannon.

She had already admitted quietly to herself that he held some kind of allure to her despite the fact that she felt like she was under his microscope. She saw something special in him, a kind of sight beyond sight that was both terrifying and enticing. Even with such a gift, though, he was just so damn thirsty to know more about her and not on a biographical level. He wanted to know what made her tick. It had flattered her. More importantly, though, it had challenged her.

She had had to reassess what she could show of herself. Had her open book policy served her all that well up to this point? Was she really as much of an open book as she fancied herself to be? That was to say nothing of the most immediate challenge he posed.

He was like a minefield that she had to navigate, never knowing where those triggers were hiding, those things that set him off. She had figured it out a little bit, she thought, but it was a big, fucking deformed minefield.

Now, though, she was angry with him. She didn't want for him to get answers from her like this. So _aggressively playful_ this was and moreover, it wasn't fair. And, frankly...She didn't know if he knew it, what the extent of his clairvoyance was, but right now, he was playing directly into one of her biggest kinks, holding her down like that, gentle though his touch was.

“Get off of me,” she said, though it was not resolute at all.

She was staring into his eyes.

“Make me,” he growled.

She stared at him silently for a moment before she hooked her leg around his back and used her stomach muscles to pull herself up. Their interlocked bodies twisted in the air as she knocked him back onto the bed hard, sending his head colliding with the oak headboard.

 _“Aw, fuck,”_ he laughed, wincing in pain.

She straddled him now, pinning his arms to his sides. She wasn't so gentle with him, though he could have easily thrown her off of him if he wanted. Both of them were winded, staring into each other's faces. She didn't grind into him, though she half-wanted to, riled up as they both were, if only to exercise her atrophied wiles over him, to conquer him in some small way.

He rubbed his lips together, looking over her body before settling his gaze back on her eyes.

“Hit me, Lou. Scratch me, _fucking tear me to pieces,”_ he growled.

“You son of a bitch,” she said, laughing humorlessly. “You already know I'm not a fucking victim, but you still want to make me the bad guy!”

Trevor's face got serious before he rolled his eyes at her.

“That's not what this is about, Lou-”

“Bullshit it isn't, Trevor,” she interrupted. “Jesus, Michael was right about us...We can't be alone together for five fucking minutes before we start in with the the _stupid_ games,” she said quietly, shaking her head.

Trevor stared straight at her.

“Louise, do you mind not mentioning _Michael_ while you're on top of me? It's a waste of intimate physical contact,” he said humorlessly.

Louise ignored him.

“I'm not one of your crew members, Trevor. We aren't robbing or shooting people together. There's no fucking reason for you to keep trying to raise my fucking hackles!”

Trevor shook his head at her and snorted.

“You and I both know that's not true, Louise.” He looked over her body once more. “I mean Jesus,” he laughed, now speaking with purposeful diction, “It is clearer now, more than ever, that you and I have some serious fucking sorting to do; _lots_ of conversations need to happen before we get there, sweetheart. And I'll tell you one thing,” he started, his voice getting low. “I am not the _least_ bit averse to having the first, second, and last of many _tête-à-têtes_ like _this.”_

Louise shook her head at him incredulously before releasing his arms, picking up the pillow next to his head, planting her face inside of it, and screaming into it. When she was done screaming, she threw it in his face before climbing off of him, stomping into the bathroom, and slamming the door shut behind her.

 

 

“Louise,” Trevor said into the bathroom door flatly. “Open the door, kid.”

_He hadn't thought that she was going to throw a fucking temper tantrum._

He listened for a response, but got none. He pounded on the door. He had been doing so intermittently for the past five minutes, trying to coax her out of her stupid little fit, but she was dead silent.

“Ya know, we could have talked this out rationally,” he said in a placating tone. “Or we could have went back to watching the tube. I would have even let you pick something else,” he lied. “But _noooo,_ you had to go and do what you do best. Fucking giving me the silent treatment when I drop a truth bomb on you.”

Truth be told, his rising frustration wasn't due purely to the fact that she was now ignoring him. He also had more than a little sexual frustration nagging at him from behind his zipper. Sure, he had started it, but who could blame him? He wasn't going to get her to talk him through the mixed messages she was sending him. Besides, as much as she supposedly hated the games that they played, she was a formidable opponent. _This is why I don't date younger women,_ he thought.

More silence. Due to the combination of his pent-up sexual frustration and the fact that it was just his fucking tendency, his anger was rapidly climbing and it didn't take him more than another minute to decide to put a stop to this bullshit. He stood back from the door and kicked it in. One good kick splintered the wood around the frame, another opened the door.

Louise sat on the edge of the tub, looking up at him frozen in shock, biting on the pendant that hung around her neck. She let it drop from her mouth. The look in her eye was somewhere between scared and angry. Trevor strode right in and knelt down in front of her, staring up at her with anger in his eyes.

“Are you happy, Louise?” he asked pointedly, gesturing toward the busted door.

“What if I had been in front of the door, you _ass?”_ she spat at him suddenly.

Trevor rolled his eyes.

“Well, you fucking weren't,” he said.

“You didn't know-”

“Louise,” he barked. “You were quiet the entire time that I was standing on the other side of that door. Do you think you could stand to be quiet for another minute while I say my piece?” Louise leaned back into the shower wall and sighed, rolling her eyes. She looked at him and did a key-turning motion in front of her lips before folding her arms in front of her.

“Good,” he said brusquely. He sighed himself before speaking again, suddenly realizing that he wasn't quite sure how to say what he wanted to say. He was quiet until he saw that Louise was looking at him expectantly and impatiently. “I get it, okay? You had your nice little world turned upside down by a bunch of criminal dirtbags, to say nothing of your husband or former boss' involvement.” Louise's eyes softened a little. “Things between you and I have been getting...” he searched his mind for an appropriate euphemism. “Well, they've been getting _confused._ And you're frustrated and now you're acting out,” he said. She glared at him now. “But like it or not, you're in this situation. You and I are going to be in close quarters for the next few days. _I_ can live with that because, believe it or not, I enjoy your company. _I like you_ even though you drive me up the fucking wall. I like looking at you, I like listening to you sometimes, and yes, I like having you on top of me under any and all circumstances. But I don't expect anything from you.” He breathed hard through his nose. “You might not like me, but I would appreciate it very much if you didn't do this every time we have a fucking disagreement, okay?”

Louise's eyes were soft again. She looked him up and down.

“Fine,” she said, somewhat hesitantly.

“Good,” he said softly. “Now, uh...I need for you to leave for about five minutes because,” he said staring down at his crotch, _“Little Trevor_ and I have something that we need to take care of and I don't think you want to be here for that.”

Louise cocked an eyebrow at him before smiling and shaking her head. She got up from where she sat and walked toward the splintered door. Suddenly, though, she stopped and turned toward him. She stared at the floor for a minute before looking up and meeting his eyes.

“I never said I didn't like you, Trev,” she said softly. The look in her eye told him that she meant it and she wasn't saying it just to appease him, nor was she saying it to toy with him. He let a small smile spread over his face.

“And I never said you were a victim _or_ a bad guy, kid.” She smiled softly at him.

“Take it easy on _Little Trevor,”_ she said sardonically, turning around. A few seconds later he heard the door to the room close.

_Hmm, maybe two minutes would do the trick._


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who knew that Louise had so many live skeletons in her closet? Trevor is about to discover a couple more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh, so I started this one off light with a couple of vignettes to show how Louise and Trevor have been passing their alone time, but don't let it fool you, it's about to get heavy. Heavier perhaps than anything else in the story up to this point. I feel like, for posterity, I oughta warn y'all that if descriptions of familial violence are a trigger for you, it's best not to read on. Hope I didn't give anything away. This is a little bit of a heart-rending chapter, but I hope you like it, regardless.

The next couple of days were a haze of idle activity. The two of them, Louise and Trevor, had reached some kind of tempestuous arrangement whereby they could have fun, get into a stupid argument, and then make up as soon as Louise caught a glance of Trevor's angry face and took pains to make herself look small, or some approximation of that arrangement.

One day, they had decided to take a little scenic hike in the closest tree stand they could find. Louise had wandered off while Trevor was taking a leak on a tree. When he was done, he realized that she was gone and walked around barking her name, getting progressively louder and more agitated.

Finally, when Louise was done having her fun (or rather when she decided that she didn't want to make Trevor any more angry for fear that he would act on his empty threats to “put her in the ground”), she chucked a pine cone at him from where she was sitting in a tree as he wandered by.

He looked up at her.

“Oh, _real_ fuckin' cute, Lou. You know you had me running around thinking some fuckin' puma had pulled you off into the brush and made a meal of you?”

Louise swung her legs and giggled throatily.

He shot her an agitated look that told her that it was time for this game to come to an end, so she started climbing down the tree until she got to a low-hanging branch before stopping and hanging there.

“Let's go!” he snapped.

“I'm stuck,” she lied.

“Then drop!”

“I'll get shin splints.”

Trevor sighed gruffly before walking over to where she was hanging and reached for her.

“Hands!”

“I need to use my fuckin' hands to get you down, Louise!”

“You don't need to put them _inside my panties_ to get me down!”

"Well, I oughta get somethin' out of this!"

 

The two had become accustomed to visiting the same diner for their daily sustenance, and they had grown especially fond of one waitress who had come under the impression that they were married or something.

“How are my favorite lovebirds doin' today?” chirped Charlene.

“Everything's coming up daisies for me and the missus, Charlene, how about you?” said Trevor eyeing Louise to see how long it would take for her to blow their cover by collapsing into a giggle-fit.

Louise rolled her eyes.

“Well, it's better now that the two of you are here,” she said, batting her eyelashes at Trevor.

It was fairly obvious to Louise that Charlene had no qualms about flirting with her pretend-husband right in front of her. Ugh, what was it about unavailable men that made the Charlenes of the worlds so shameless?

“Today's special is a beer-battered halibut on a dinner roll with dill mayonnaise. Can I interest either one of you in tryin' it out?”

She looked to Louise, who was reflecting glare into an irritated Trevor's eyes with her butter knife. It took her a minute to realize that the waitress was acknowledging her.

“Oh. No, not me...The doctor says that the mercury content in fish isn't good for our unborn child,” Louise said stabbing the butter knife into her napkin.

Trevor shot her a surprised look.

“Well,” exhaled Charlene. “I didn't know you two were expectin'! You must be so excited!”

“Yeah...” Louise said dryly, locking eyes with Trevor. “But we're having a hard time agreeing on a name. See, my husband here thinks that nobody will pick on our child if we name him Tank, but I think that names have just as much bearing on a kid's disposition as how well you take care of them, and I don't want for our son to grow up to be an anti-social blight on humanity's ass.”

Trevor leaned forward and locked eyes with Louise.

“Well, then you're not doing him any favors setting him up to grow into a snobby, know-it-all poindexter creep! I mean, _Sebastian,_ Louise? For chrissakes,” he said.

“It's a family name, Trevor, and I think that it lends itself to a certain amount of refinement-”

“More like a certain amount of _our son is never going to get laid because he'll spend his evenings wearing human skin while he sips Merlot and reads books written in dead languages!”_

Charlene cleared her throat.

Trevor sat up straight.

“Charlene, just bring us the usual so I can get my wife back to our place and shag some sense into her.”

Charlene stood agape for a moment before snatching the menus off the table and scampering back to the kitchen.

Louise glared at Trevor as she crossed her arms and testily shoved her back into her seat. It only took her a second for her to break out into a smile, though. She picked up her butter knife again and went back to reflecting glare into Trevor's face.

“Goddammit, Louise!”

 

 

On the fourth day, a little before dusk Trevor had told Louise that they were going on another outing, which she thought nothing of. He didn't allude to it being special in any way. He didn't grin coyly or use menacing innuendo, he just got them both into his truck and put them on the road. Only after an hour and a half of driving did Louise become suspicious, but all Trevor said when she asked him where they were going was “You'll see.”

And Louise didn't feel especially threatened by his stodginess, so she didn't try to drag any answers out of him.

Eventually they pulled up to a dusty patch of earth in Sandy Shores. It only took Louise a minute for her to realize that it was a runway. A runway for airplanes. At the end of the runway was a small hangar made out of corrugated steel, which housed two planes, one a crop duster, the other, a light passenger plane.

Trevor hopped out of the truck and made for the passenger plane. He stopped and turned around and saw that Louise was standing there, her eyes flitting between him and the plane suspiciously.

“Let's go!” he said.

“What?”

“Get in the plane, Louise, we're going on a trip.”

She narrowed her eyes at him.

“You want me to just get into a plane with _you?_ What am I, high?”

“I fuckin' wish. Come on.”

Louise crossed her arms and glared at him.

“What are you playing at, man?”

Trevor dropped his arms to his sides and made his way toward Louise.

“I _told_ you, Louise. We're going on a trip. Now if you'd please get your ass into that plane, all will be revealed in due time.”

 _“Trevor,”_ she scolded.

“Louise, do you know how many months of training it takes just to figure out how to learn how to taxi a plane out onto a runway? If, after thirty seconds in that plane I haven't demonstrated my aptitude, feel free to jump out before takeoff!”

Louise continued to glare at him for a moment before she looked past him to the plane and then back at him. His eyes were wide, but not the wild, unmerciful kind of wide that he so often demonstrated.

She sighed.

“Don't think I won't jump out if I catch even a _hint_ of you fucking around, Trevor...” She looked him up and down. “Do you really know how to fly?”

“I was fucking born to fly, Louise,” he said almost pleadingly before gesturing to the plane.

Louise hesitated for a split second before deciding that, somehow, the thought of giving him the satisfaction of being able to say that she was too scared to call his (possible) bluff was more agitating than going against her self-preservation instincts.

 

When they took off, Louise was ready to kick herself for allowing him to goad her into getting into the plane with him, but, after a few minutes of watching him attentively and expertly maneuver the plane and apparently knowing which switches to flick and at what times, Louise stopped biting her necklace.

It took her a solid forty five minutes to bring herself to look out the window at Trevor's insistence, but when she did, another wave of calm came over her. This was yet another trust test, she decided. So far, they were passing.

 

After what seemed like a pretty short time later, Trevor seamlessly landed the little plane after a smooth descent and promptly hopped out and walked to the other side where Louise was. Louise looked out the window but she couldn't make out much. Night had fallen and all she could see was the light blue band of light on the horizon where night wrestled down the day. They were in the desert, she knew that much. Trevor reached his hand in, but Louise just looked down at it for a second and then into his face. His face fell into a scowl. He jerked his hand at her indicating that he wanted for her to take it. She did and he helped her out of the plane.

“We're here,” crooned once she was out. Louise looked around.

“That doesn't help. Where is _here?”_ she asked. But before he could answer her, she squinted past him and saw a familiar butte back-lit by that band of light on the horizon. She shook her head in disbelief before she walked around to the other side of the plane. Off in the distance, just a little ways, she could see it. A lone little house sitting in the shadow of a big, white yacht. _No._

She turned around to walk back to Trevor, but saw that he had already joined her.

“What are we doing here?” she asked him, alarmed.

He smiled a devilish smile at her. “I found your address book when I was at your house getting your stuff. This address was under the name _Satan_. I knew you wouldn't _tell_ me who lived here, so I thought you could show me instead. And baby, if that worthless husband of yours isn't _Satan_ to you, then I can't imagine who is. So, I plugged the coordinates into the GPS and now here we are,” he answered. Louise stared up at him with wide eyes.

“What the _fuck,_ man?” she said. She covered her face with her hands, wishing that she could bury herself in a hole or evaporate suddenly.

“Come on,” he said, taking her by the arm. Louise immediately started dragging her feet while he pulled. She stopped and turned to face her. “Don't be so fuckin' childish,” he barked. She looked up at him.

“Childish, Trevor? Childish is flying out to the fucking desert on a lark just so you could piss me off!”

This was officially a bridge too far.

“Quit being so dramatic, Lou. It's none too becoming of you,” he shot back taking her by the arm again. She continued to struggle, but she knew that she couldn't overpower or outrun him, so she reluctantly surrendered.

She would rather be anywhere else on the planet but here. She would rather be at the business end of a car battery in the company of teamster goons. But still, she walked with him, hanging her head, praying for the ground to open up and swallow them before they reached the house.

As soon as they got close enough, Trevor peered up at the yacht, cackling.

“What the fuck is this shiny piece of shit doing next to this little house,” he asked incredulously.

He looked back at her, clearly expecting an answer, but she just glared at him.

They got to the door and she hesitated, but he pulled her out in front of him and shoved her toward it. She looked back at him with pleading in her eyes one more time before she knocked on the door. She could hear the yapping of a little dog, which made her cringe. The door opened and she turned to face the person who had answered.

An all too familiar face. A middle-aged, bottle-blonde, former beauty queen holding a butt-ugly Pomeranian in one hand and a cigarette in the other. The woman looked at her with surprise.

“Louise?” she said in a Southern drawl, looking her up and down.

“Hi,” Louise replied flatly.

The woman took a long drag of her cigarette and blew it into Louise's face. Louise flinched against the stinging smoke in her eyes, stifling a cough.

“Well, I'll be...” the woman said, looking past her at Trevor.

Louise turned to Trevor who was eyeing the woman at the door.

“Who's your friend?” the woman asked flatly.

Louise stepped past her, through the cloud of cigarette smoke and into the house. She turned around and motioned to Trevor to come in. When Trevor was at her side, she said “Trevor, this is Rosemary, Rosemary, Trevor.”

“Mmm...It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, _Rosemary,”_ Trevor purred lecherously.

Rosemary guffawed. “Likewise, I'm sure. John!” she cried over her shoulder.

“What is it Ma?” came a voice from a backroom.

“Your sister's here. Come say hello!” she shouted back before turning back to Louise and Trevor. “Louise, Trenton-”

“Trevor,” Louise corrected, stepping closer to him.

She felt Trevor looking at her.

“Right,” said Rosemary, giving Trevor a once over. “You two are just in time for dinner. I hope you'll stay...”

 

 

The four of them sat in the dining area, Trevor, Louise, Rosemary, and John, none of them even bothering to attempt idle conversation over their meal. Trevor and John both hovered over their plates. Rosemary continued to smoke her cigarette over her half-eaten meal while Louise just scowled at her mother. Trevor, for his part, was enjoying this immensely. He didn't know what he had expected to find flying Lou all the way out here, but this was better than anything he could have conjured up on his own.

It's not as though Louise had ever done anything to make Trevor feel inferior, intellectually, morally, or otherwise. In fact, sometimes her egalitarianism bored him. Once in a while, he'd start fights with her just to test her, to see if he could get her to act all high and mighty but she never did. The closest she'd come was when she found out that he could do advanced math in his head. _Whoop-dee-fuckin'-doo._ She'd started fawning over him for it rambling about how great his little skill was, about all the potential it had, _blah, blah, blah,_ but he shut her down before she could give him a career aptitude test or whatever the hell she did for the kids at her school. He didn't want someone whom he had close to twenty years on pulling that _encouraging teacher pulls ne'er-do-well student out of the gutter and makes him a somebody_ bullshit on him. Not unless teacher gave her student an enthusiastic sex reward for every question that he answered right, and he was fairly sure that that wasn't going to happen.

However, despite the fact that she wasn't vain or condescending, there was something deeply satisfying about seeing who her people were. Anyone who looked at her or listened to her for a few minutes would have probably guessed that she came from a perfectly nice, quaint, middle-class background with all the support a girl could want from her parents. But now that they were here, he could see that that wasn't the case. He'd really just wanted to take her for a ride, to have one last hoorah with her before the others came back from L.S.

It seemed that both Rosemary and John returned the derision that Louise had for them (and was doing a terrible job of hiding). It was so palpable that the pair hardly seemed to notice that she had brought him into their house without an explanation of who he was. Trevor wondered if she had brought home strays before. Maybe her husband had been a stray?

“Angelfish, you haven't touched your plate,” Rosemary said flatly.

Louise stared at her.

“I'm not hungry.”

Rosemary stared back.

“Dammit, child, you _will_ eat something. The last thing I need today is to scoop your ass off the floor when your blood sugar plummets and you pass out.”

Trevor looked between the two women. He hadn't been able to see a resemblance before. While each was easy on the eyes, the two women had very different features. Where Rosemary had hooded brown eyes, her daughter's were wide and green. Rosemary was olive complected while Louise was fair and freckled. But it was obvious now that, in addition to her little curves and healthy bust-line, Louise had gotten her glower from her mother.

“I'm not twelve, Rose,” Louise said.

Rosemary stubbed out her cigarette and turned to her daughter.

“I know you're not twelve, Angelfish, so maybe you could quit being petulant child and humor your mother,” she spat back in her genteel Southern drawl.

Louise stared for a moment before she stabbed at her plate and took a bite, never breaking eye contact with her mother, blatantly ignoring her mother's request regarding the petulance. It was wholly amusing for Trevor to see someone as _dignified_ as Louise behaving this way.

This woman, who was weirdly prudent before it was age-appropriate, who had dedicated her life to bringing structure into the lives of lost children. Here she was suddenly patterning her behavior closely after an angry child.

Just then, John cleared his throat and leaned toward Louise.

He was tall and lanky, with a full mouth and a snaggle-tooth. He wore his sandy blonde hair in a ponytail beneath a trucker hat. He couldn't have been more than thirty five or so, but he was wind-burned and weathered. He had eyes like Rosemary's, narrow and brown. He had obviously not been as blessed in the looks department as his sister had. Or the brains department for that matter. One could hardly tell that they were related. His voice was deep and he spoke flatly with the Southern drawl that was mysteriously absent in Louise.

“What're you doing back here, Angelfish?” he asked Louise, shooting Trevor a look as he did. “You ain't been back since dad died.”

Louise looked at Trevor. She looked like she could have _disemboweled_ him with a butter knife at that moment. But he saw that look in her eye that indicated to him that she'd already devised a satisfactory answer in place of the not-so-easy-to-understand truth.

“Me and Greg are splitting up. I came to tell you in person,” she said, not taking her eyes off of Trevor.

Both her mother and her brother stared at her blankly.

“You've gotta be kidding me, child,” spat Rosemary after a minute of silence. She stood and scooped up the little dog that had been waiting and whimpering at her feet through most of the meal. “What did you do, Louise?” she tsked. It came out so casually that it almost sounded like a catchphrase, and it could well have been because Lou immediately sprang into defense mode as if she had been bracing for it. She rose to her feet facing her mother.

“What do you mean what have _I_ done, Mother? Marriages fail all the time, more than fifty percent of the time, in fact, and you think I should be impervious to that?”

“Oh stop it...”

“No! You couldn't stand Greg before he was a big shot. You told me on my wedding day that I was making the biggest mistake of my life. You said that I would spend the rest of our union trying in vain to make him happy. You said that he was a snob and that would drag me down with him. Well, congratulations, Mother, you were right.” Louise mockingly affected her mother's accent and fanned her hands out when she continued, “My marriage has gone to hell in a hand basket.”

Trevor took the opportunity to walk out of the dining room, undetected, and poke around the little house. It wasn't a bad looking little place. It was obviously new construction, humble as it was. Trevor walked to a credenza in the hallway off of the living room and pulled it open. He could still hear them bickering in the dining room. The conversation had gotten heated enough for the volume of the exchange to rise.

_Well, maybe if you hadn't decided to drop your family as soon as you got to Vinewood..._

_What in the hell are you talking about, Mother? I didn't drop you. I wanted for you to move closer-_

_Oh, bullshit! You wanted for you father to leave me to come live with you in your goddamn castle in the clouds!_

_That's so unfair! I never told him to leave you! I just thought that he would get better if he wasn't languishing in the desert feeling sorry for himself!_

Trevor rooted around in the credenza drawers, finding nothing of value. Thimbles, ribbon, a carton of Redwood cigarettes. He found a picture frame face-down in the drawer. He picked it up and turned it over.

_Oh, well isn't that nice, Louise...I'm sure he'd be so proud of you. You turned out just like him, after all, except that instead of hugging a bottle of whiskey, your benders consist of terrible decisions..._

It was a photograph of Louise and a middle-aged man that Trevor guessed to be her father. His face was wizened but it wore a wide, toothy smile. He had long, dark hair and a tan-line from wearing sunglasses over the same wide, kind green eyes that Trevor recognized as Louise's. He was barrel-chested, with big arms, one of which was wrapped around his daughter's shoulders. Louise was obviously younger, late teens, probably, with auburn hair instead of black like it was now.

The conversation in the dining room suddenly hushed to a dull roar. He could still discern between Louise and Rosemary's voices, but he couldn't make out what they were saying anymore. Louise's was the voice of an obstinate teenager that had been caught with a boy in her room or a dime bag in her backpack. Rosemary's was the voice of a mother trying give her daughter _what for_ and to keep it out of the neighborhood's gossip pipeline.

Trevor slipped the photograph out of the frame and tucked it into the breast pocket of his flannel shirt before haphazardly tossing the frame back into the drawer, breaking the glass in the process. He started back toward the dining room, but he decided to case the living room on his way back. He looked around the walls at the photographs, noticing that both Louise and her father were curiously missing from the memories adorning the walls. That's when the voices rose again to an audible level, again purposefully enunciated.

_Just what in the hell are you trying to infer, Louise?_

_You know what I'm getting at, Mother. Even when he was alive, you talked about him like he was a fucking amoeba and you treated your stupid little lapdog better than you treated him! What the hell did you think that was doing to him?_

_Oh, Christ, Louise!_

_He drank for the same reasons that I avoid you like the plague._

_You think that you can blame me for that, Louise? You think I exist just to be yours and your father's bugaboo? Of all the entitled bullshit!_

Trevor looked around the living room but didn't see anything that interested him. The room was full of white furniture and tacky wall art and fake flowers in glass vases.

_Oh, yeah, Mother, I'm entitled alright...Because I think that children are “entitled” to being able to come home from school without walking in on their mothers in bed with married church deacons._

_Louise!_

Trevor strode into the dining room just in time to see John, who had close to a foot on his little sister, hovering over her with a crazed look in his eyes.

“What in the hell did you just say to your mother, Angelfish?” he said, his deep, oafish voice dripping with venom.

Louise stared up at him shaking her head before saying, quietly, “Go to hell, Johnny.”

At that, John took hold of her upper arm, raised his hand and slapped her hard on the face. So hard in fact that the only thing that kept her from flying sideways onto the floor was John's arm, which anchored her.

It all happened so fast, as it always did. Trevor's vision went dark. He could feel his blood turn into fire as it raced from his heart to the rest of his body, mainlining adrenaline and Cro-Magnun rage into every corner of him. It was a feeling that he had felt a million times before, so often that it hardly even scared him anymore. A feeling that encircled his entire self; His rational mind, silent though it may have been most of the time, being crushed down stubbornly and completely by that familiar demon. That demon that didn't speak any language comprehensible to the human mind, just an ugly, animalistic screech that simply told him to act and to do it fast.

Trevor marched stiff-legged over to where John and Louise stood. John must have noticed him advancing out of the corner of his eye and turned to him, letting go of Louise. She was dazed from being hit and stumbled backward into the wall. Trevor arched his arm back, growled, and landed one good punch to John's jaw, knocking him into the table with a loud crash of dishes and silverware. John rolled off of the table, unconscious.

Rosemary cried out while the little dog in her arms began to yap. Trevor started toward where John now lay on the floor, ready to bash his fucking brains in. He made it about two steps before he felt a pair of hands on his arm. He spun around, still keyed up, and met Louise's gaze.

She wore no pain on her face, which bore the red mark of her brother's palm. Those eyes were what did it. They were the brightest green now, half-pleading, half-defeated, and they softened him, seemingly anesthetizing that demon some with incomprehensible efficiency. He lowered his arm and stared at her for a moment. He could see Rosemary in his periphery, looking on, frozen in shock while the little dog continued to yap, but he kept his eyes locked on Louise's for another moment before he looked up at Rosemary.

He jabbed a finger at her and barked, “He got off light.”

He was panting. Rosemary just stared back at him, eyes wide, mouth agape in disbelief. He held there for a moment before he grabbed Louise's hand and led her out of the house.

The two strode out into the night, hand in hand making haste toward the plane. They got about twenty yards away before he felt Louise's arm go limp and let go of his hand. He kept walking a few feet, still stewing in his rage before he turned around. Her head was down. Her hair covered her face. _Jesus_. She looked up at him and then past him and then into the sky before she dropped down, crouching in the dirt. She hugged her legs and buried her face in her arms. _Christ._ Now was not the time.

He walked over to her and pulled her up, forcing her to look at him. She was breathing hard through her nose, quaking and shaking her head as if refusing passage to the tears that were threatening to come.

“Don't. Don't you dare cry, Louise. Those two don't _fucking_ deserve your tears,” he said, pointing toward the house, trying to keep his anger in check.

She got still suddenly. She bit her quivering lip and stared at him. He broke eye contact only for a minute to look past her at the gauche, white yacht sitting in the driveway.

Louise didn't need to tell him how they had procured that thing. It was painfully obvious that they had wanted that disgusting status symbol and that _she_ had gifted it to them to make them happy. Shit, that's probably what she spent the bulk of her life doing. Making people happy. Pacifying. Mollifying. Stroking egos. Keeping peace.

He could see it before him, clear as day. The whole episode inside, the way that her mother had talked to her had left no mystery. Louise had tried and failed to appease the remaining two members of her immediate family the only way that they would let her: By gifting them with a symbol of everything that she hated. It was big and flashy and impractical. It must have been painful for her to do so, but she had done it because she was trying to hold on to the only two human beings that she had left to call her people.

And when that failed to put her in their good graces, she had given up and tried to hate them so that it wouldn't hurt so much when they rejected her love. Because they were fucking _emotional pirates._ The agonizing thought turned Trevor's stomach. That was one thing that he hated about himself. When it came to shit like this, to _people,_ he was practically clairvoyant.

He let go of her and reached into the waist belt of his jeans and pulled out his handgun.

Louise flinched a little bit before she looked up at him with wide eyes.

“Trevor-”

He cut her off by reaching toward and pressing his thumb gently to her parted lips. He let go and turned her toward the yacht by her shoulders. He got behind her, squaring his body with hers. He gently seized her arms and lined his up with hers, forcing her to take the gun in her hands, under his guidance. He slid both of their index fingers over the trigger and cocked the gun. He was pressed into her now. He leaned over, breathing heavily into her ear.

“You don't owe anyone anything.”

He knew that this was selfish, but he needed some gratification. He was pissed off that he hadn't been able to bash John's head in for laying his hands on Louise. If he couldn't quiet the demon that way, he would do it by some other means.

The adrenaline was making him hyper-aware of the feeling of Louise pressed into him. He could smell the vanilla scent from her lotion drifting off the nape of her neck and her hair, but now it was mixed with something else, something earthy and warm that he quickly realized must have just been her. Her body was still vibrating a little bit.

Louise was breathing heavily now. She leaned back into him, legs weak as they emptied the clip on that shiny reminder of her torment.

When it was over, they stayed there, frozen for a minute before Louise slipped her arms out from under Trevor's surrendering the gun to him.

She turned around and looked up at him expectantly. They were both getting lost in one another's faces after a moment. Trevor swallowed hard and reached into his breast pocket and pulled out the photograph that he had stolen, and wordlessly handed it to Louise.

Louise looked down at the photograph and narrowed her eyes as though she didn't recognize it. Soon, though, she smiled, faint and sad though it was.

“I don't have this one,” she said after a minute, choking on a sob, but quickly putting it down.

She looked up at him.

“You do now,” he said.

He didn't know what else to say.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

They stood in the darkness, not saying anything. Somewhere off in the distance, a coyote cried. Crickets chirped around them. Louise reached into her dress pocket and pulled out a cigarette and a lighter. Trevor narrowed his eyes at her as she lit it and took a long drag.

“What are you doing?”

Louise looked up at him and exhaled the smoke.

“Having a smoke,” she said, stating the obvious.

 _“Ugh._ Where the fuck did you even get that?” Louise shrugged.

“I nicked it from Rose.”

Trevor glared for a moment before he shot her a droll smile.

“You little thief,” he chuckled.

Louise smiled back at him before blushing and avoiding his eyes.

Now wasn't perhaps the best time for him to tell her that she had stolen his fucking heart, too.

 

 

Trevor taxied the plane into the hangar while Louise slumped sideways in her seat, her head against the window. She clutched the photograph in her hand. The ride back had been quiet, though not uncomfortable. He cut the engine and promptly hopped out and came to her side to help her out of the plane. He stood there, holding his hand out. This time, she took it right away, climbing out of the seat and hopping out. She slipped the photo into her coat pocket and followed him out of the hangar.

She felt a little silly now. Where she had been angry at him for dragging her to her mother's, now she felt embarrassed and vulnerable that he had seen that side of her. It was a side that she had wanted to keep close to her vest, especially around Trevor, who, in the time that they had known each other, had become an absolute ace at pushing her buttons. Now he had pushed the biggest one and she couldn't envisage where they would go from here. Frankly, though, she didn't have it in her to care too much just then. She just needed to sleep.

They walked toward the car. Suddenly, though, Trevor stopped in his tracks and turned to look at her. Her head had been down and she almost walked right into him.

“What is it?” she asked quietly.

They were standing in the a bright ring of light that shone off the side of the hangar. He looked agitated as he scratched at his neck and shut his eyes tight.

“Who gave you that nickname?” he asked.

“Huh?”

 _“Angelfish._ Where did you get that nickname?” he asked softly.

Louise's stomach turned. She hated when he was like this. All vague and confusing. It gave him a weird menace that made her want to crawl out of her skin. It made her feel two inches tall. It made her feel like he could see the inside of her mind. They had gone into that house together and turned it inside out and he was fixating on her fucking nickname now?

_“Why?”_

Trevor flinched at her question as if that one syllable had rended his insides. His face was twisted into a strange expression, one that she hadn't yet seen, even at his angriest.

“Just answer the question,” he said, holding up his finger.

He opened his eyes and peered at her, putting his hand down. Louise sighed, shrugging her shoulders.

“My dad gave me the nickname, Trevor, okay?” she said impatiently.

She started to walk past him but he reached his arm out and stopped her from taking another step.

“You and your dad were close?”

Louise sighed again, more deeply.

“He was my best friend and biggest fan,” she replied quickly. “When he died I wanted to die, too. Can we go now, please?”

Had seeing her at the mercy of her living family members given him some kind of ratcheted-up thirst for her vulnerability?

“But your mom and your brother still call you _Angelfish_ even though it was your dad's nickname for you. And in doing so, they took something nice from you and made it ugly and grotesque so that you couldn't hold onto that nice memory anymore...”

It came out so robotically.

She backed away and looked at him. _What the hell was he playing at?_

“I've had enough of your fucking riddles and caprices for one day, Trevor. I want to go,” she said firmly.

He continued as if he hadn't heard her, as if he was doing math in his head again.

“And your husband didn't do much better by you. You made his _fucking_ career happen for him, you built his dreams for him, deferring your own in the process...”

_“Stop it.”_

“...And made you live a lifestyle that you loathed and then he started banging a girl that hawks said lifestyle to impressionable teenagers...”

_“Shut up...”_

“...And then he refused to give you a divorce so that you could walk away with dignity and now here you are cleaning up his messes for him, worrying about whether or not he's still got a _fucking pulse.”_

Louise let out a noise, a cross between a groan and a scream and pulled at her hair, pacing around in tight circles.

“Why are you doing this to me?” she barked. “'Cause I'm worried about the guy I was with for a decade? That makes me a pushover?”

Trevor advanced on her, getting inches away from her face.

“Because I don't get you, Louise! You let the people that you love, that are supposed to love you back, eat you up and then you try to help them. What kind of sick shit is that?” he yelled, backing away a bit.

His tone startled her.

“Why does it bother you so much?” she asked suddenly, trying to maintain control over her own tone so as not to rile him up anymore. She didn't even realize that she had just confirmed his accusation for him.

“You get roped into these bullshit situations and you act like you're not put upon, like they don't bother you, but I know they do! You're faking and I fucking _hate_ that about you. Trashing a fucking yacht isn't enough to change that. You need to ask yourself why you do it. _Why are you faking?”_

She searched his eyes. And what she found was eerie. It was a truth that she had never seen in anyone's eyes. He was genuinely bothered by what he thought was her greatest shortcoming. He wasn't just trying to push her buttons, he was trying to dig, to understand something about her that she still hadn't come to understand herself. To hold up some magic mirror for her. Still, though, he was pissing her off with his interrogation and she didn't have an inch of restraint left to give him.

He was still invading the personal space afforded to her by Western convention, so she decided to give him a taste of his own medicine, even though she suspected that she wouldn't exactly be exploiting any kind of weakness in him in doing so. But she didn't want to shrink away from him. Not now. She walked into the space remaining between them.

“You wanna fucking find out, Trevor? Huh? You want me to fall in love with you so you can find out what it is about me that makes the people I love want to rip my heart out? 'Cause it kind of seems like you already want to _fucking_ hurt me,” she barked back. She began wringing her hands, suddenly uncomfortable with the decision to be so close to him. “And you know something else?” she said, tapping her foot now, “I hurt people, too, okay? I've fucked people over and ruined lives, so maybe you should heed your own advice and quit pretending I'm some kind of sacrificial lamb because it's bullshit!” She had barely had anytime to finish her thought before...

There was no warning. It wasn't like in the hacky movies that Solomon produced. There was no rising action or foreshadowing as far as she could tell. He just swooped in, grabbed her around her middle with one arm and slammed his mouth into hers.

She just stood there at first. Up to this point, every time she had had a first kiss with someone, she had been expecting it, either because there was some kind of logical justification or because she had been asked. She didn't really know what to do with this urgent, five-alarm kiss.

But then she started to feel that fire in her belly and that zero-gravity feeling under her feet and she intuitively pressed into him further and returned the kiss. She braced herself against him by putting her hands on the back of his head while each preoccupied their mouth with the other's. He pulled her in closer to his groin and then, as if compelled by some invisible force, they stumbled backward until she was pressed against the hood of the car with him between her legs.

Somewhere in there, her jacket was peeled off and the front of her dress unbuttoned. She pressed her crotch into his, eliciting an eager groan and an expletive from him each time she did. He ran his hands under her skirt and under the front of her dress, feeling her up as though he would never have the chance to touch another human female again. She liked how his kiss tasted even though she thought that she might have tasted blood in his mouth, like maybe he had bitten his tongue in the midst of his rage.

 _“Mmm, Lou,”_ he groaned into her neck.

Just then his phone rang, those four familiar notes chiming in his pocket. He ignored it, starting to trace kisses down her stomach, slipping his hands under her skirt and pulling off her panties. The chiming kept on.

“Trevor,” Louise whispered breathlessly.

He kissed and sucked the inside of her thigh, coming dangerously close to the real thing.

 _“You taste so fucking good,”_ he groaned into her flesh.

The phone rang again and, while she _really_ didn't want to, she fought the temptation to lay there, to let him keep going, to put his mouth on her. She shot up and looked down at him. He looked up at her.

“What's wrong? Too much teasing?” he asked, sounding genuinely confounded.

Louise laughed despite herself. “No, no. It was...” she started, biting her lip and exhaling hard through her nose. “You're phone is ringing. It's probably Michael.”

The mention of that name made Trevor cringe, but he didn't protest.

Louise regained her wits and pulled her panties back on as Trevor pulled the phone out of his pocket and answered it.

“Michael? What the _fuck_ can I do for you?” he spat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeesh. Yeah, that got real. But it had to be done. Any who, at this point, I've pretty much decided that this is going to end up being a series, though this was NOT, I repeat NOT the last chapter of this part. But it is all I have written for now, so I'll have to get going on the rest when I'm good and inspired. As always, I hope you're enjoying it :)


	9. Chapter 9

Trevor and Louise were headed back to Chumash, having gotten word that Franklin had finished his latest contract with Lester, which Louise was still in the dark about. Franklin would be arriving back at the motel a while after them if Trevor could help it, while Michael planned on arriving late the next morning. Trevor made haste toward the motel, more than a little disappointed that he and Louise had been _interrupted_ but also not wanting to field any questions about where the pair and been and what they had been doing. 

Louise looked out toward the road, and Trevor had a hard time reading her expression, even when her face was awash in the harsh lights of the ever-more frequent truck stops that they passed. She busied herself by absently smoothing down her hair and her dress, no doubt feeling self-conscious that Franklin would be able to read hers and Trevor's latest pass time in her dishevelment (even though she looked fine).

 

The pair hadn't spoken much on the ride back, which was giving Trevor an itch. On one hand, he would have liked very much to ask her what she was thinking, if she was having regrets, if she had simply been lost in the moment as she had the night that she had swatted him in the chest with her sketch book. On the other hand, Trevor was, again, keyed up from their unresolved liaison and also terrified at the prospect of Louise telling him that what had just happened meant very little to her, that she had only been trying to release some of the tension from the night's events. 

He didn't know if he would have been able to call bullshit on her. She had been _very_ enthusiastic, pushing into him, staring into his eyes. She had let him pull open the front of her dress, had allowed him to gaze on a body that he would have liked very much to see more of. But he also knew that it was ill-timed for more than one reason and sometimes that emotional shit was a toxic aphrodisiac.

Finally, from the corner of his eye, he saw her peering up at him, occasionally letting her eyes rest on his chest instead as though staring at him too long was akin to staring into the sun.

He glanced over at her. Her breathing was quiet but it looked as though her chest was heaving a little bit, like she was gasping but trying to keep it under control.

He sighed.

"Got something you want to say?" he said quietly.

Her eyes danced all over him, searching for something to say.

"I don't know," she responded, barely above a whisper. "Do you?"

He snorted.

"I have _plenty_ I'd like to say but maybe now's not the best time."

"That's not like you. You always speak your mind," she said, turning her gaze back on the road.

He shook his head, a little angry now that Louise seemed to be handing him the lead as though it was too hot in her hands.

He pulled off suddenly. They were still about twenty miles out from Chumash, but fuck it, if Franklin had something to say about their absence he could tell it to Trevor's fucking fist.

He parked the car in a dusty loop intended for road-weary drivers needing a nap as indicated by a crudely rendered pictorial message at the open gate that led into the lot.

He looked over at Louise, who had one of her legs curled under her. She stared at him, clearly hungry for him to break the silence.

"Look, if it makes you feel better, you can just tell yourself that I took advantage of you in your emotionally vulnerable state," he said wearily. "Fuck it, you can tell Mikey and Frank that, too if it helps."

Louise glared at him.

"What the _fuck,_ Trevor?"

"Because, to be completely honest, even _I_ can tell that our little _detour_ has been a bit too far afield..."

"Please stop it."

"So I think when we get back to Chumash, I'm going to leave you in Frank's capable hands and head on back to Sandy Shores. I've been neglecting shit there for long enough, anyway."

He looked over at Louise, though it was fucking agonizing to do so. When he looked into her face, however, he was once again disarmed by her eyes. They were wide and scared for a minute before they narrowed at him.

"So, this is the real Trevor Philips? I was wondering when you would show up. I'm sorry I wasn't able to garner your seal of approval. What, was I too easy for you?" she asked, sounding wounded.

He guffawed

"No!" he said incredulously. _"Jesus,_ Louise, I didn't fucking say that."

"Then why are you backpedaling now, Trevor?"

He chewed on the question for a minute, but a minute longer and you might as well have driven a fucking stake through his heart. So true to form, he let the anger flow out of him.

 _"Because,"_ he spat, "I know that _that_ wasn't you back there. Yeah, I fucked up, I shouldn't have put my hands on you, but you know, you could have stopped me if you wanted to-"

"Well I _didn't_ want to, Trevor," Louise responded, matching his anger. "I wanted..." she trailed off as she shut her eyes tight and inhaled deeply. She continued softly and with intention, "I wanted your hands on me," she shrugged. "If you think that a little emotional abuse is enough to turn me into some kind of wounded bird that's easily plied into screwing whoever shows me a kindness, then guess again _._ Because I've dealt with it for a long time and usually it's enough for me to want to bury my head in the sand and never look at another person again. But not with you. You make me feel like it's not my fault, which is something that nobody has been able to do _ever._ " She was fully turned toward him now with her cheek pressed against the headrest. "Correlation doesn't equal causation, Trev. Just because we picked _then_ to act on impulse doesn't mean that it didn't come from somewhere  _real."_

Trevor was staring at her now. She sighed as she looked at him, pleading with her eyes to say something. He listened for alarm bells in his head, for his bullshit detector to sound, but it was silent. All there was was her. 

He swallowed hard.

"Where is _somewhere?_ " he said, almost choking on the words.

She stared at him pensively for a second before her face softened.

Just then, she leaned toward him and planted one on his mouth. It was soft, so soft that it made his breath catch in his chest. She broke the kiss and nuzzled into his cheek. She talked into his face, softly. The kiss and the vibrations from her voice as she spoke were enough for his semi to re-emerge. 

"Somewhere is where I've been for almost this whole time. At first I thought that I was just scared of you and that it turned me on to...Ya know, get that close to the fire. But now all I want to do is, like...This. I want to tell you that I think you're cute when you act like a twelve-year-old and you look hot when you fly and that I like when you eye-fuck me because it makes me feel sexy and that even though you make me insane, I like being around you, too. I like _you._ "

Trevor turned to her. She held his face in her hands and stroked his cheek.

She didn't know what the fuck she was talking about, but just then he didn't care because she wasn't asking for anything. All he wanted to do was to give her something. He wanted for her to have something of his, something that she wouldn't drop or hide or get rid of or try to fix.

She smiled at him and kissed him on the nose before she grabbed his wrist and looked at his watch.

"Franklin's going to be there soon. So you need to tell me now whether or not we can put a pin in this for a minute while we figure shit out. But we're not leaving this spot if you tell me you're going back to Sandy Shores. If you do that, you might as well rip my heart out of my chest right now."

"Do you give blowjobs when you're afraid of being abandoned?" he asked dryly.

She smiled at him wryly.

"Do you return the favor before you abandon the people that blow you?"

"Sure, if they don't bite down too hard."

At this she threw her head back and laughed and it was enough to make him want to melt, just like it always did. 

Trevor sighed and looked at her before pulling her into another kiss. When they broke away from each other's faces, he looked at her again. 

"Alright, we need to get the hell out of here because if we stay here another minute, we're never going to leave and I don't think that this is a good place to raise Tank," he said.

"You mean Sebastian," she shot back dryly, climbing back into her seat.

"Over my dead body."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second to last chapter of THIS part of the SERIES. In like a lion, out like a lion, I assure you. It's long as hell, but I hope that you enjoy it!

Two days later, Louise was laying in bed back at the motel, staring at the ceiling. She glanced over at the clock for what felt like the millionth time. 2:28 a.m. She sighed and looked back at the ceiling. She had spend the last couple of days assuring Michael and Franklin that, yes, she was okay. At some point they had started to believe her, likely attributing it to stress and boredom.

It had turned out that Trevor wasn't entirely bluffing when he had said that he was needed back in the desert to take care of work stuff. He had started to get texts and calls at all hours from some guy called Ron telling him that things were getting too hot back there, whatever that meant. Something about guns or drugs or guns filled with drugs and some other guy called Oscar.

Before he left, he had sat down on the bed next to her and assured her that he would be back after he had straightened his shit out, that no, this wasn't goodbye. It was funny, really, she had been pulling her damndest poker face when he told her. She wasn't twisting his arm to give her a satisfactory promise to return, but she had probably been wearing the worry somewhere he could see it.

They had gotten one more feverish kiss in before Louise spotted Michael outside the window, walking toward the door and she had shoved him away before Michael came in. And then _au revoir._

In her relative solitude, she had gotten to thinking about Greg and she had half-wanted to laugh at herself for feeling a twinge of ickiness when she thought about how _technically_ she still wasn't divorced and so in the minds of _some,_ she was fucking around. In her own mind, she was indeed fucking around but the fact that she was still legally married was background noise to the cacophonous and torturous thought that Trevor was so, so very criminal and that she didn't know how the hell this shit would all pan out. _What were they even doing?_

Of course, she had meant everything that she had told him. She did want him, she was attracted and she was heeding his admonition that she needed to take something for herself, to quit spending all her time and the capital from her human soul giving to others. Still, though, what the fuck? What was she supposed to do with this?

Then there was the nagging doubt that she was usually able to crush in pretty short-order, the doubts concerning where he stood with her. Ugh...and green lights...Ugh, and she was supposed to be home by now, preparing to help out with the summer art program at that rec-center.

She was again in the throws of another thought-tornado when she was startled by the phone on the night stand. She let it ring three times. Maybe they were directing a wake-up call to the wrong room?

“Hello?”

_Aah, Mrs. Bisby. I didn't wake you did I?_

The voice on the other end of the line was wholly unfamiliar. It was thick with the accent of someone from one of the outer burroughs of Liberty City.

“Who is this?”

_Me? Oh, well don't worry about that just now, let's just say that I'm a friend of your husband's. Are you alone?_

“How, er, what-” she stammered.

_We haven't got a lot of time, Louise. Are you alone or not?_

Louise didn't know how to respond. Nobody was meant to know she was here. She watched outside to see if Michael or Franklin had heard the phone and if they would be coming to investigate, but she saw nothing.

_Louise, I strongly suggest that you answer my question before I start to get impatient._

“I'm alone,” she said suddenly, almost without thinking.

_That's good news for you, Louise. Now, I'm calling because we have a friend of yours here that would like very much to speak with you. I'm going to put her on the line now._

Louise heard the sound of the phone being passed, the sound of the man on the other end getting fainter before she heard another voice speak into the phone.

 _Weez?_ She heard a woman say through a shaky voice.

“Isabelle?”

 _Yeah, Weez, it's me. Um, look, I need your help here_.

“Isabelle, are you okay? What the hell is going on?”

She heard the man's voice again, though it was muffled and she couldn't understand him.

_Weez, I'm here with some men. They picked me up last night outside of my gig and now I'm here and they're saying they need to talk to you-_

Her speech was quickened and scared.

“Isabelle, calm down! Did they hurt you?”

_No, but...Louise I'm scared. They said they ain't gonna let me go 'til they have you here._

“Okay, Izzy, just keep calm, okay? I'm not going to let anything happen to you. I need you to put them back on the phone.”

_Louise heard Isabelle wordlessly pass the phone. So, Louise, what's going to happen here is that you're going to cooperate with us and if you do so, we won't hurt your friend, ya hear?_

Louise was scared and seething at the same time, a feeling that she had never experienced. Her hearing seemed to be sharper with the rush of fear.

“What do you want me to do?”

_We have eyes on your motel right now. If we catch sight of either one of your little bodyguards, we are going to make you very sorry that you called their attention to this exchange, okay?_

His voice was cold and deliberate and she couldn't tell if he was on the level about not touching Isabelle, but right now, she didn't know what to do. Obviously, they knew where she was...

“You have my word. Now tell me what you want.”

_Leave your room and cross the road. There's someone waiting there for you in a black sedan. Get in the car without alerting your companions. You have one minute and not a second longer to do as I say._

“Tell your guy I'll be right out,” she said trying not to let her voice shake too much.

 _Good girl,_ she heard him say before the line went dead.

She was buzzing with fear chemicals. She quickly slipped on her boots and jacket and quietly opened the door, closing it agonizingly slowly so as not to alert Michael or Franklin. She bee-lined it for the road and stopped to glance back toward the darkened rooms. Sure enough, there was a black sedan waiting across the empty highway.

The driver stepped out. It was a man, that couldn't have been older than thirty, standing there. He was short and stocky with huge, creepy blue eyes. He wore a black suit and black leather gloves He grinned at her.

“Louise Bisby, glad to know ya, I'll be your escort for the evening,” he said gesturing at the car.

Louise looked at him.

“I fucking swear, if you touch one hair on Isabelle's head-”

“Isabelle will be fine if you play ball, now get in the car.”

Louise sensed the urgency in the situation and the rational, goal-oriented side of her was in hyper-drive as she complied with the driver. She walked stiff-legged to the passenger's side and got in. As soon as they were both in the car, Louise immediately locked on to a pistol that was sitting on the dashboard. She looked over at the driver, who was pulling out onto the highway. They drove into the night, completely encircled by darkness. Louise couldn't even see any other cars on the highway, which was unusual. Usually in this part of the state there were at least some commuters on the road.

The driver sat menacingly, not even looking her way. She had so many questions that she wanted to ask him, but instead, she focused all her mental efforts on saying a quiet prayer that Isabelle was alive and untouched.

 

When they arrived at the abandoned warehouse in South L.S., Louise quickly became alarmed that they hadn't placed anything over her head to keep their base of operations clandestine. _Did that mean that they were going to kill her?_ If they weren't worried about her being able to identify where they did...whatever it was that they did...

Generic Goon Number One came pulled into the warehouse, on a cement loading dock and parked before he got out and came to Louise's side, opening the door for her. She stepped out and looked around. The room was filled with fluorescent light, but beyond that room, it was dark. He took her by the arm and began leading her to one of the darkened back rooms, along a cement catwalk. They rounded a corner and started down a corridor. It seemed like they were walking down that hallway forever.

Generic Goon Number One pushed her back away from the door once they reached end of the corridor. It was so dark that she hadn't even seen it. He rapped on the door four times before it opened. He gently grabbed Louise by the shoulder and led her into the room.

The room was dark save for a pendant light that hung in the middle, giving off a very dim light. In the relative darkness, Louise was able to make out two men stationed in either far corner of the room while Isabelle sat at a table in the middle of the room, flanked by another two guys. A third guy sat across from the other three. He looked to be in his mid forties with slicked back blonde hair.

“Louise,” said the blonde guy. “It's so nice to meet you finally. Have a seat,” he said motioning to an empty seat.

She recognized his voice as being the one that she had heard over the phone. Louise was about to comply with his request that she be seated when he shot out of his seat suddenly and stood over her, peering down at her. Without breaking eye contact with her, he addressed Generic Goon Number One.

“Did you remember to pat her down, Marcus?”

“Shit,” spat Marcus.

“Jesus, kid, this is simple stuff for fuck sake. You're never going to make it in the game if you can't remember this kind of thing,” scolded the blonde guy.

“I'm real sorry, Gavin,” said Marcus sheepishly.

Just then Marcus pushed Louise against the table and began frisking her. She jumped.

“What the fuck,” she spat.

It was over before she knew it, though. He knelt over and stuck his hands in her combat boots, satisfied that she wasn't carrying a weapon. Still, given the fact that she was wearing a skimpy camisole an shorts ensemble under her jacket, she felt that the point was kind of moot.

“Sit,” said Gavin.

She did, quickly, if only to have her legs under a table since she suddenly felt very exposed. She looked to Isabelle, finally, who seemed to be alright, though she was shaking a little bit. She wanted to talk to her, to comfort her, to apologize. Just as she was about to do one of those things, Gavin cleared his throat.

“Louise, I imagine you know why we've brought you here today?”

“How many guesses do I get?” she shot at him. He cackled at this.

“Oh, you are funny, Louise. I didn't imagine that you had a sense of humor.”

Louise sighed. _It really wasn't that funny._

“Tell me how to secure Isabelle's release,” she said, not pulling any punches.

Gavin raised his eyebrows at her. Ugh, he was so greasy and smarmy, just being around him made Louise want to puke, but she just clenched her jaw, waiting for him to respond.

“Well,” he said. “You wanna get right down to business, then? Alright, alright. Usually, I like to have a little fun, you know, break the tension a little bit but...”

“If you're worried about her going to the police, you shouldn't. Because I have a lot of dirt on her, ya know? She has done some highly felonious shit that the statute of limitations hasn't run out on, so she doesn't exactly have an edge where the law is concerned,” Louise said.

She was alarmed at how robotic her own voice sounded. Gavin looked over at Isabelle, who was wearing a worried but intrigued expression, and sighed.

“Well,” he said again, nodding his head, “I mean, quite frankly, we don't need her here now that we have you and your husband's security guy, who rolled over about twenty minutes before we called you.”

He scrunched his mouth off to the side. He looked at Isabelle.

“How do you want for this to end, Isabelle?”

Isabelle immediately looked at Louise.

“I don't want for Louise to get hurt,” she replied quietly.

“Izzy, don't worry about me. If they're giving you an out, you should take it. I'll be fine. I can't tell you how, but I promise we'll both be fine.”

Louise turned to Gavin.

“I want her free and safe. What can I do to ensure those things?”

Gavin considered this for a moment.

“We'll take her home and sit on her until Greg is here and we get all this sorted. If, between then and when we get all of this sorted out, she doesn't squeal to anyone, she'll be off the hook.”

“No bullshit?” Louise shot back immediately.

She wanted this resolved quickly and she didn't want for Isabelle to be involved at all. She was willing to do anything to make those circumstances materialize.

“Believe it or not, Louise, I didn't get into this business to kill women, I did it to make money. If you don't interfere with those goals, then your friend here will be fine and so will you,” he said.

“Nothing happens to Isabelle,” Louise repeated.

“If everything goes the way that I want it, then no, nothing happens to her.”Just then he turned to Marcus. “Marcus, take Isabelle home. We'll arrange for a detail to keep an eye on her until we can dissolve that arrangement. Don't fuck it up.”

With that, Marcus walked to Isabelle and picked her up by the arm. They made for the door. Louise and Isabelle exchanged one more glance. Isabelle was terrified, Louise could tell, but assuming that this wasn't a ruse, she could rest easily at least knowing that Isabelle would be okay. Plus, she hadn't been bullshitting about Isabelle's less-than-stellar position in relation to the law. She had a lot to answer for if they came knocking, namely, about seventy plants in her basement.

Louise winked at Isabelle to signify to her that it was going to be okay. Isabelle had seen Louise at her most neurotic, so the gesture assuaged her fear some, it seemed. Marcus disappeared with Isabelle into the corridor. Louise turned back to Gavin and she must have been wearing an expression on her face connoting her sudden fear that that had been too easy and that she might have just sent Isabelle to certain death. Gavin looked at her, his eyes softening a bit.

“I was never worried about her going to the police,” he said. “Half of 'em are in our pockets, anyhow. I just needed to get you here.”He leaned in toward her. “However, don't think that I'm not above icing you or your husband or anyone that you care about if shit doesn't go my way. After all, I was able to find your hiding spot, right?”

Louise nodded silently.

“Your husband has a good security consultant. So good, that his reputation precedes him and it wasn't all that difficult to get him here. He's the one that found you and, incidentally, he's the one that's going to help us get your husband back here so that we can settle this once and for all.”

 

 

“Listen here, you grimy fuckin' geek, I told you I'd put one behind your ear if he wasn't in my sights in forty-eight hours! Now I'm getting real impatient here and if you don't come through for us now, you're fuckin' dead!” screamed Gavin at Willard.

Willard was pink-faced and shaking, sitting across from Louise at the table, ferociously pounding on the keys of his laptop.

“I'm trying to get a lock on him, sir! I swear, he's probably landing as we speak!” squeaked Willard back.

Louise was feeling the tension, too. She sat in a hard, wooden chair with Marcus squeezing her shoulder. She had been there for two days, watching Willard, the security consultant that rolled over on her husband, desperately trying to track each and everyone of Greg's movements, big and small, from behind his computer.

“He said he was coming, Gavin,” Louise said trying to muster as much calm as possible. She looked him in the eye. “Willard's right, he's probably on his way now. Just give it a little while...”

Gavin paced back and forth. Louise had watched him slowly unravel over the past couple of days. As she watched, she simultaneously prayed that Isabelle had found a way to sneak away, to leave the city and find somewhere safe in case this guy blew his lid. Louise could tell by his short fuse that he a) wasn't someone to fuck with and b) wasn't at the top of the food chain. Only someone who had a boss-man breathing down his neck would get so tense so quickly.

“Well you'd sure as shit better hope so, Louise 'cause the same'll happen to you if your dirtbag husband doesn't come and square this STAT,” spat Gavin.

Marcus' grip tightened on her shoulder. Louise couldn't be more uncomfortable if she was sitting on a bed of spikes. She was sweaty from the heat but intermittently she would get an intense chill from her sweat every time the invisible cooling element in the vast warehouse would kick on.

Just then, voices rang out from a hallway off of the massive room in which they now sat. The voices echoed off of the high, vaulted ceilings and bounced off of the concrete. It wasn't twenty seconds before four generic goons emerged from the corridor, two of them flanking Greg Bisby, who marched dutifully, but with some trepidation. Finally, they brought him to where Louise, Willard, Gavin, and Marcus were and shoved him down into a chair.

Gavin had stopped pacing but he still had a crazy look in his eye and sweat on his brow as he turned to Greg and his little menagerie of gangster babysitters. One of them shoved Greg into a chair opposite Louise. Louise had thought that when this moment came that it would calm down Gavin, but seeing Greg seemed to cause another spike of crazy to rise in him because two seconds after Greg was seated, he flipped the table that was between the three captives, sending the laptop to the floor and shattering it into a bunch of pieces. Willard stared between Gavin and the table, stunned.

Louise could feel how wide her eyes were but she breathed steadily and purposefully, trying to keep her bearings. She hadn't felt this much terror since Michael kidnapped her and suddenly found herself wishing that she was re-living that experience instead.

“Greg fuckin' Bisby, how the hell are ya, man?” barked Gavin.

Louise found herself disgusted with Gavin all of a sudden. He wasn't owning his crazy, just honing it, using it as a prop. Even so, he was terrifying and there, with his disgusting slicked back hair, flexing nuts for no reason, she was ten times more nauseated than she was when she first laid eyes on him. Being in front of Greg under these circumstances was only adding to it.

“You pissed _a lot_ of people off, Gregster. Now it's time to pay the piper.”

Greg was panting slightly, staring at Louise, who looked at him with anger. It was his fault that she was here. It was his fault that she had become so ingratiated into the seedy underbelly of L.S. He didn't take his eyes off of her as he spoke.

“I'm ready to cooperate,” Greg said, practically whispering.

Gavin rubbed his hands together and breathed heavily out of his nose.

“Good, good. 'Cause if you don't, your sweet little wifey here is going to taste my gun and nobody here wants that.”

Louise flinched at his words, suddenly wondering if what he had said about not wanting to kill women had been a bunch of bullshit.

“That's not going to be necessary,” Greg said.

Gavin looked to Marcus.

“Marcus, we have some calls to make. Get Tyler Dixon's people on the phone first.”

 

 

Michael and Franklin were at Lester's practically bumping into each other as they paced.

“Man, Lester, can't you work any faster? Fuck only knows what they doin' to her right now!” barked Franklin.

“Don't think like that, Franklin. We're gonna find her and she's gonna be okay,” said Michael right away, though Franklin could tell that he only half-believed what he was saying.

“I'm working as fast as I can, fellas,” said Lester. “It looks like Willard's laptop is offline, but I'm working on getting a lock on Greggy-boy's cellphone. I'm guess that they were using Louise to bring him out. Let's hope he did right by her for once.”

He typed feverishly as he spoke.

“Man, when's Trevor gettin' here?” asked Franklin.

“He should be here any minute,” Michael replied.

“Why did you wait to call him, man? We could use a little more fire power right about now, you know that, right?”

Michael stopped pacing and shot Franklin a look.

“Because the last thing I wanted was for Trevor to go off half-cocked and ruin our chances of getting her out alive, Frank!” Michael replied tersely.

Franklin stopped pacing, too and collapsed onto the bed. He buried his face in his hands.

“It's been two days! We should'a fuckin' found her by now. This is fucked, man.”

They sat for a minute, the silence only broken up by Lester's ferocious typing when they heard the front door blow open. A second later, Trevor walked in huffing. His face was red and sweaty. His gaze flitted between his two friends before he pointed his finger at Michael, advancing upon him.

 _“You,”_ he growled at Michael. “What the fuck!”

“Hey, back off, T! Your rage-a-holic bullshit is doing exactly jack and fuckin' shit to help this situation right now!” Michael yelled back.

Franklin hopped up from where he sat on the bed and stepped between the two men. The last time he had been this freaked out at the prospect of someone else's death was when he had given dual ultimatums regarding the fates of the two men standing before him. Now he was back in the same place where he had been when he was trying to put out that fire. And the last fucking thing he needed right now was these two bull-headed motherfuckers going at it when they needed to be coming up with a solution.

“Y'all chill the fuck out! Put your motherfuckin' quibbles aside for five minutes while we figure this shit out, will ya?”

Trevor backed off but he still looked at Michael as though he thought that he could make his face melt off if he stared hard enough. Michael looked down the bridge of his nose, breathing hard.

“T, man, she stole off into the fuckin' night, okay?” Franklin continued. “It couldn't be helped.”

Trevor turned to Franklin, glaring still.

“She didn't fuckin' go of her own volition, Frank, something fuckin' spooked her and we all know who it was. The very fucking people that we were supposed to be protecting her from!”

Lester turned around in his chair just then.

“Yes, yes, yes, you're all inept bodyguards but cool your shit for a second 'cause I think I just found Greg...”

 

 

“So let me get this straight, Greg,” said Gavin. He was pacing again and driving Louise batty. “You're telling me that, in addition to being in the shit with us, you are also beholden to a bunch'a fuckin' feds?”

Louise could feel her jaw crunching, she was clenching it so tight staring at Greg. She couldn't tell if she was irrationally angry or if she was terrified or both, but her body was buzzing so bad that all she wanted was to be untied so that she could do some jumping jacks. Yes, Gavin had decided that, even though the situation that they were in was enough to keep them pliable, Louise, Greg, and Willard needed to be tied up.

Greg had just gotten done begrudgingly disclosing that his sudden reversal of the casting decisions on the stupid fucking Vinewood trash movie that had spurred this whole debacle was not due to some zany whim, but that the FIB had conscripted him into their service. See, the film was guaranteed to be a hit, no matter how terrible it was, and the studio already had a distributor on lock down; a distributor that was being used in a massive money-laundering operation.

The FIB decided to catch them with their pants down. In order to do so, however, they had to deflect some of the attention from the movie and reconfigure the casting to include a lot more unknowns, unknowns who also happened to be in their fold. Union rules dictated that the crew had to be retained, so this was what they had to work with and Greg was their patsy. Unfortunately, he was now also up shit creek with Louise in the back of his canoe. They were so very fucked right now.

In a way, Louise saw that she couldn't really be too angry at Greg. After all, she could imagine that having the feds breathing down your neck was enough to make anyone skittish. She could even see why he had felt the need to run off. But still... _How the fuck had he gotten into so much trouble? What did the feds have on him that they could use to strong arm him into their little operation?_

“Well, technically, I was beholden to the feds first. At least that's what I thought,” Greg responded.

“Fuck,” screamed Gavin.

He kicked Willard's chair over with Willard still in it. The poor geek cried out as he hit the floor.

“Stop!” Louise cried.

She immediately regretted it. She was not, after all, among _her_ criminals. This Gavin fellow was properly fucked and he was not going to cozy up to her.

He stomped over to her and got down in her face.

“I'm going to go and make some calls and you better fucking hope that this pans out my way or you and your stool pigeon husband and that fuckin' geek on the floor are going to have your brains sprayed all over these walls,” he said menacingly.

Louise hadn't meant to draw his ire. She just felt sorry for Willard, even though he was probably a fucking snake in the grass.

She was relieved when Gavin stood up and brusquely walked out of the room. She looked up at Greg, who was staring at her with concern in his eyes. She couldn't remember how long it had been since he had looked at her with anything but disdain.

“I'm so fucking sorry, Weezie,” he said and he meant it, she could tell.

Louise had tears in her eyes now. She was scared that this was going to be it. She missed Michael and Franklin. Most of all, she missed Trevor. She thought back to their cramped quarters at the motel and suddenly, she was longing for it.

“I never meant for any of this to happen. I'll find a way to get you out of this, I swear,” he said. Louise sobbed and looked down at Willard. She could only see his feet and she wished that she could find a way to scooch over to him and help him up. She wanted to ask Marcus to help him up, but she knew that he was just as scared of Gavin as she was and that he probably wouldn't do anything about it.

She looked up at Greg. He was looking at her softly. He suddenly looked to her like he had before he had become a big shot. Sure, he had more than a few standard items of hipster regalia, but otherwise, he appeared genuine now, which was more than she could say of him in the last few years.

“Hey,” he said gently, sounding the way that he used to when he was trying to talk her down from the ledge after she'd had a fight with her mother. “Hey, Weezie, remember the first time you and I hung out? You were under the bleachers after cheer practice?”

Louise nodded silently.

“You were still wearing your uniform and I walked under there and caught you smoking.”

Louise snorted.

“Yeah, you had blue hair back then.”

He smiled and nodded at her.

“And I walked over to you and I saw that you were crying. I asked you what was wrong and it took fifteen straight minutes of me making stupid jokes before you finally answered...”

Louise thought back to that day. Honestly, she could hardly remember now. It was so long ago. She shrugged.

“You said that you were crying because your mom had made you join cheer squad and that you couldn't join the student art collective because of it...”

Louise shook her head.

“That's right...” she said, remembering now. “What a stupid thing to cry over...”

Greg smiled weakly at her.

“No, it wasn't stupid. It wasn't about what clubs you wanted to be in, Louise. You wanted to be your own person, to do the things that you loved and not having that was agony for you,” he said.

His face fell as he shook his head.

“Yeah,” she said. “But I quit cheering a week later, remember? 'Cause you made me admit that I hated it. You made me admit it out loud...And the day I quit, you took me out on our first date.”

She had completely repressed these memories some how but now they came flooding back. Perhaps there was some truth behind the whole life flashing before your eyes thing.

“We went to Cluckin' Bell and got shakes and then we went to the old drive-in and stared at the screen,” he said.

“And you told me that you wanted for one of your movies to be shown at a drive-in, just once.”

Greg squeezed his eyes shut and nodded. He opened them.

“And then you kissed me,” he said.

“And then I kissed you.”

Tears were streaming down Louise's face but now they weren't tears of fear, but rather, tears of profound sadness at their lot. She didn't want this for him. Sure, she was pissed as hell at him, but she didn't want for anything horrible to happen...

“When you kissed me, I told myself that I would never let you go, no matter what. And I meant it, but...I was selfish, Louise. I did exactly what your mom did. I made you live a life you didn't want and now you're paying for it...”

Louise just stared at him, now. She hadn't heard him speak so lucidly in years.

“When we get out of this, Louise, I'm going to let you go, okay? I'm going to let Louise do Louise for once,” he said softly.

He had tears in his eyes now. It broke Louise's heart.

 _Well, it might be a little fuckin' late for that, hon,_ she thought.

Even so, she appreciated what seemed to her to be a very sudden change of heart regarding the state of their union. And she still didn't want for any harm to come to him.

“Thank you,” she said, smiling at him through tears.

A few minutes later, Gavin stormed back into the room. He was brandishing a gun, now. He marched over to where Greg was tied up. His face was all red, which made his pale blue eyes look even more terrifying. He looked like he was panicking. He stuck his finger in Greg's face.

“You fuckin' mook. You fuckin' prick!” Gavin shouted at Greg. “Your fuckin' Fed buddies are all over this like shit on Velcro! Fuck!”

Louise's heart was pounding in her ears. She didn't know what to do. She didn't know how to fix this. She wriggled against the duct tape around her wrists and frantically looked around the room. For what, she didn't know. But she had to do something, had to say something.

“G-Gavin,” she choked out. In her head, the name sounded barely audible, but he turned toward her just then. “Wh-H-How can we make this right without anyone getting hurt? Is-is it money you want?” she stammered. “We can get you money...”

Gavin just stared at her wide-eyed for a moment before he bent over, cackling manically.

“Louise, are you able to even _comprehend_ how much fuckin' money you would have to throw our way to make this go away?” He stood up now, glaring at her. “Let me be the first to tell you, you fuckin' can't. Not by a long shot.”

Louise was convulsing with fear now.

“I'll do whatever you want. You can put me on the hook for as long as it takes, Gavin, please.”

Gavin bared his teeth at her before he turned toward Willard, you had been silent the whole time. He trained his gun on him.

_Pop._

Greg flinched and then froze. Louise tried to scream but nothing came out. Her breaths came out convulsively.

“You didn't have to fucking shoot him! What have you done,” she squealed in between heaving breaths.

“Shut ya fuckin' mouth, Louise!” Gavin barked at her.

His accent was even thicker now. He started toward her.

“You fucking shot Willard! You fucking shot-”

Louise barely got the words out before she felt something come into contact with the side of her head, something so hard as to be rendered painless. She saw a flash of light and felt her head get heavy before she heard more voices. Familiar ones. Three distinct and beautiful voices, followed by three more gun shots. She felt a body fall at her feet and heard another one fall behind her.

“Louise!” came the loudest and most beautiful voice.

More shots before she lost consciousness...

 

 

_“Daddy!” Louise squealed as soon as she saw him._

_She had just blown through the double-doors of the tiny schoolhouse and was making her way toward the bus before she saw him, towering over the heads of a handful of other eight-year-olds on her bus route. It only took her a half a second to comprehend that it was him._

_Yepper, long, wiry black hair under a dusty old stetson. Great big beer gut and tattooed forearms, opening to her. It was Jeb Verland, alright._

_“Get over here, Angelfish, give your daddy a hug!”_

_She ran to him and let him envelop her in his arms, lifting her off the ground._

_“I thought you weren't coming back 'til next week!”_

_He gave her a big, wet kiss on the cheek.  
_

_"What and miss my Angelfish's birthday? No, sirree, booger! Wild horses couldn't keep me away,” he said in his deep backwoods Georgia drawl._

_He set her down and took her book bag from her and slung it over one shoulder. It was quite a sight to see; a veritable giant of a man carrying a tiny pink book bag. He grasped her hand and they started down the dusty road toward home._

_“What'd you learn in school today, Angelfish?” he inquired._

_Louise looked up into her dad's face and searched her mind for the day's most choice lesson._

_“Um...Well, we, uh were talking about the human body...”_

_“Ah, anatomy, now there's somethin' useful. What'd you learn about the human body?”_

_“We were...Um, we talked about the cardi...er...card-i-o...” she started, struggling to pronounce this latest two-dollar word._

_“Cardiovascular?”_

_“Yeah!” she chirped. “The cardiovascular system. The heart and stuff.”_

_Jeb smiled down at Louise._

_“And?”_

_“It's super tricky, daddy. There's so much stuff to know.”_

_He snorted._

_“Aw, come on, Angelfish, just tell me one thing that you learned about the heart.”_

_Louise shuffled alongside him, kicking rocks with her feet.  
_

_"The heart has...er...four! Four chambers!” she squealed, very pleased with herself.  
_

_"Four!” Jeb cried with mock-enthusiasm._

_“Well, I'll be!”_

_“Yeah!”_

_They were quiet for a while, shuffling down the road. Jeb was careful in making his steps tiny to match his little girl's. Suddenly Jeb piped up again._

_“Well, I suppose you would need four.”_

_Louise looked up at him inquiringly._

_“Why?”_

_Jeb snorted again and smiled his big toothy smile at her._

_“Well, 'cause, Angelfish, there's lots of types of love but there are four real important types of love,” he said as if it should have been obvious._

_Louise giggled._

_“Daddy, you're silly.”_

_“Naw! I'm serious, booger. There are four real important types of love and I 'spect those chambers are each for one of them four.”_

_“Okay...” Louise said, taking the bait. “What are they?”_

_Jeb cleared his throat and straightened his back, affecting the air of a fancy professor or something. This pulled another giggle out of Louise._

_“Well, one kind of love is love for the people that you have to love. You know, family and stuff...Like how you and me gotta love momma and John even though they's hard to love sometimes. They need people like us to love 'em.”_

_Louise nodded._

_“I don't love John, though,” she said matter-of-factly._

_Jeb pretended to ignore her but he chuckled despite himself before continuing._

_“Another is for the people that are easy to love, like you. I don't have to try to love you, Angelfish. That's like shootin' fish in a barrel.”_

_Louise beamed up at him._

_“You're easy to love too, daddy!”_

_Jeb booped her nose as he smiled down at her._

_“Then there's the kind of love where it grows nice and slow on ya like the way moss grows on the bottom of a Georgia pine...It could take years for it to grow, but it gets there, eventually...”_

_“Sounds boring,” Louise said, eliciting another giggle from Jeb._

_“And last, but certainly not least...” he began. He stopped and crouched down in front of her. She stopped, too, but she still swung her arms around for lack of being able to sit still. She was only eight, after all. She looked at Jeb. “...There's the love that comes barrelin' at you like a freight train. It comes at you outta nowhere. Heck, you might even see it comin' for a little ways but boy-oh does it come fast and boom!” Louise jumped when he said it. “Before you know it, you love 'em! And ain't nothin' you can do to stop it...”_

_“That sounds scary,” Louise said looking down at her feet._

_“Yeah,” Jeb said getting up to his feet again. “It can be a might scary, Angelfish, but it's nice, too. Kind of like fallin'...”_

_They started walking again, hand-in-hand._

_“How do I know which one to pick?” she asked._

_Jeb sighed._

_“You don't get to pick, Angelfish. But ya know, somethin', that's okay. 'Cause all of 'em are good...”_

 

 

Louise awoke in a white room that she didn't recognize. At first, she thought that she might be back at the motel but she moved her eyes around the room, though it hurt like hell to do so. She could smell the sterile hospital smells, the strongest of which was the white smock with tiny blue stars that she wore. She hated the smell of it. It was so starchy and it made her nauseated.

She reached up and touched her head. She felt gauze wrapped around it. She would have been panicking if she wasn't so out of it. She looked up to see a man striding through the door. He wasn't a doctor, she could tell that for sure. She looked at the lanyard around his neck. It had some kind of badge tethered to it.

He was a middle-aged man, with thinning hair, bulging, tired blue eyes and a depression beard. He walked toward her and came to rest at the side of her bed. She looked up at him and inhaled deeply. She knew that she should probably be preparing for the worst. She let her eyes fall on his lanyard again. _FIB_ was emblazoned across it in large blue block-print. _Norton, David_ was underneath it, next to his picture. She looked up at him.

“Louise? I'm Agent Dave Norton. I'm with the FIB,” he said softly.

Louise rested her head against the pillow. She had two guesses as to what this guy was doing in her room, neither of them held pleasant prospects.

“What happened,” she choked out. “Tell me everything...”

Agent Norton turned back toward the door and walked over, closing it gently before he came back to her bedside and pulled up a chair.

“Now, I want you to stay calm, alright?”

“Are they dead? Is everyone dead?” she said through a strained voice.

She was trying to hold back tears, to remain calm so that she could comprehend whatever news he had for her.

“Whoa, calm down,” he said resting his hand on her arm as if that would do anything to assuage her greatest fears.

“I'm a friend of Michael's...He, uh...I'm here because he called in a favor.”

Louise could feel her body catching up to her mind, now. Her heart was beating in her chest, a lump rising in her throat.

“Is Michael okay?” she asked softly. “And Franklin and...” she shuddered. “...And Trevor?”

Norton flinched at the mention of Trevor's name, which caused a surge of panic to rise within her. She must have been wearing it all over her face. Because his eyes got wide and he held up his hands.

“Hey, hey, it's alright. The three musketeers are right as rain,” he said.

“No bullshit?” she spat at him.

“No, none,” he replied quickly. “In fact, they're the ones that brought you here and got a hold of me.”

Louise was satisfied that he would have told her if something was wrong, but she was also leary as she couldn't help but wonder what kind of relationship they had with the Bureau. Now, though, she had to ask another pressing question, one that she was sure she already knew the answer to.

“Greg?” she asked. Agent Norton averted his eyes quickly before shooting a glance over at the door. “Is he dead?” she barked at him.

He pursed his lips and met her gaze again, finally. Louise covered her eyes for a second, bracing for the news. But quickly brought her hand down again so that she could look at Dave.

“It's not quite so simple as that, Louise.”

Her eyes widened at him, partly out of shock and partly out of confusion.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” she said tersely.

Agent Dave Norton cleared his throat and exhaled deeply.

“Well, Louise,” she started. “As far as the world at large is concerned, yes. Greg Bisby is no longer, but biologically speaking, he's as alive as can be.”

Louise was utterly confused now. She shook her head at him, slowly.

“Man, my head hurts to fuckin' bad for riddles right now, can you please give it to me straight?” she pleaded.

He adjusted himself in his chair.

“What do you know about witness protection, Louise?”

“I know a little about a lot, Agent Norton, but I don't know what that has to do with Greg...”

He smiled at her weakly and got in closer to her, lowering his voice.

“Do you know the story of how Michael Townley became Michael De Santa?” Louise just stared a minute before answering in the negative. “Well, then, I've got a doozy for you, Louise. I'm going to tell you the story of Michael Townley and when I do, everything will become clear, I promise...”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter of part 1 of the series :) Sequel shouldn't be too far behind.

_Weazel News!_

_A violent shootout at an abandoned warehouse in South L.S. leaves six men dead and another in critical condition!_

_Lacey Jonas re-emerges on Vinewood Boulevard after a mysterious two-month absence!_

_…_

_A violent shootout in a warehouse between unknown assailants leaves six men dead, among them reputed mobster Gavin O'Dell, a Liberty City native whom FIB agents had targeted pending a raid of his El Burro Heights Home for alleged ties to a group of teamsters known for terrorizing the Vinewood elite._

_Another man, whose name was withheld by Los Santos P.D., but whom we have received reports was most recently employed as an online security consultant at Life Invader, remains in serious but stable condition at Mount Zonah._

_It is unclear who the other assailants were as they disappeared without a trace before police arrived on the scene to discover the carnage. We'll bring you more on this story as it develops._

 

 

Trevor sat on his front porch, nursing a beer. He had been in Ron's company until Ron discovered that his attempts at kind words were doing little to coax Trevor out of moping, but rather that he was pissing Trevor off.

Trevor's mood had been oscillating between agitated and sullen since he had left L.S. at Michael's insistence, Michael, who convinced him that it was not in anyone's best interest for him to hang around L.S. waiting for a chance to see her...

Suddenly, from his pocket, came the chiming of his phone. He looked down to see that it was a conference call. He wordlessly answered.

 _Trevor?_ he heard Michael say from the other end.

“Yep, I'm here.”

Franklin's voice came through just then, sounding almost as pitiful as his own.

_'Sup..._

_I have good news. I spoke to Dave and he was able to see Louise. She's doing fine, just a bump on the head. She got out of the hospital the day before yesterday. And, uh..._

Trevor was indeed happy to hear that Louise wasn't badly hurt in their scuffle. After they had put down the six of those teamster fucks, he had picked her up and she was as limp as a rag doll the entire way to Pillbox Hill. He hadn't wanted to leave her there, but he knew that he wasn't doing anyone any favors by hanging around, least of all her.

_Dave talked to her about the little...arrangement regarding Greg Bisby._

Trevor rolled his eyes. The arrangement, ideal though it was, brought up the ever-present, but only sometimes painful memory of Michael's own arrangement with Dave Norton.

 _And?_ asked Franklin.

_Well, she ain't going anywhere. Says she doesn't want to leave her life behind..._

Trevor perked up a little bit. Though he wasn't talking to Louise himself, he could practically hear the...euphemistic tone behind it.

_Well, shit, man, what's she gonna do, then? We sure she's in the clear?_

Trevor's heart dropped a little bit.

 _Yeah,_ came Michael's voice again. _As a precaution, she's changing her name and address. She even found a new teaching gig...But Dave told me that he has every confidence that she'll be alright._

“And _Gregory?”_ Trevor asked sardonically, barely hiding his bitterness.

He heard Michael snort into the phone.

_Greg's outta here. He flew the coop as soon as he bought the farm. I dunno where he is, but Dave's biding his time, looking for a decent death story..._

The three men all remained silent on the line for a minute. Trevor almost thought better of it, but he had to ask.

“When will it be safe for us to, you know...Talk to Louise. I wanna make sure she's okay. I mean really okay.”

He heard Michael sigh.

_Yeah, me too, T._

_Me three_ , said Franklin.

_I mean, we definitely need to wait until the news of Greg Bisby's death hits the press. It's not going to be a hundred percent safe for any of us to make contact with her in the mean time. But, hell, Dave's good at what he does. Probably won't be too much longer now._

Trevor let himself perk up a little bit at Michael's assurance. For once, he might have been telling the truth, not using a Michaelism.

Fuck he missed her.

He was still kicking himself for leaving in the first place. She wouldn't have had to go through all that bullshit if he'd been able to help it, might even be at his side now if it weren't for him heading back to the Shores to deal with Guzman. Now all that he wanted was for her to be there pissing him off with her totally wrong assertions about the merits of Impotent Rage. Shit, he'd even take one of her famous cold-shoulder moments. This was worse than any cold shoulder.

It's not as though he expected for the two of them to ride off into the fuckin' sunset or nothin'. He might have been batshit crazy, but he wasn't deluded. He knew that there were practicality issues at hand regarding the two of them. But he at least wanted the chance to figure it out. Hell, maybe there was some kind of arrangement that they could work out. Or they could just fuck each other silly and hope for the best. That would have been fine by him, too.

He still hadn't told Michael or Franklin about their little tryst. And he wasn't about to now. Michael and Lester were the only two that had open lines of communication regarding Louise and he wasn't about to blow his chance to make his way into the loop.

“Well, let me know how that unfolds, will ya? Like I said, I...I really want to talk to her,” Trevor said, startled at his own tone.

 _You got it, man,_ said Michael.

Trevor hung up the phone and sauntered back into his house. He flicked on the tube, hoping that the opiate of the masses would bring him some peace until he had another gun-run to occupy his mind. He stared at the set for a while before he nodded off.

A few hours later, his phone buzzed, stirring him from his T.V.-induced catnap. The phone number was unfamiliar. It was a text. He opened it and stared at it through bleary eyes.

 _Hey,_ it read.

_Who is this?_

_Guess..._

A moment later, a picture appeared. In the background, he could see someone dressed in a powder blue unitard with a purple R emblazoned across the chest. In the foreground, he saw a pair of big green eyes under a mess of black hair. There was a bandage on her forehead where she'd been pistol-whipped. The rest of her face was out of the shot. He smiled and scrolled down to read the message:

_Found this fucker on Vinewood B. today. Made me think of you._

Trevor's heart danced in his chest.

_Did u apologize to him for all the wrong-headed shit u said bout him???_

A minute passed.

_No, but I did tell him that me and his biggest fan have unfinished biz..._

_I'll say we do. Send me naked pix plz._

Another minute passed.

_Classy cakes doesn't send naked pix 'til you've seen the real thing first ;)_

Trevor cocked an eyebrow.

_When does that happen?_

_I dunno...Might need to see you in a cockpit again to get me in the mood..._

_Will make it happen when it's safe sweet thing_

Another minute later...

_I miss you, Trev_

_Miss u back Lou_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there it is. I already have the first chapter of the next part conceptualized, just gotta commit it to writing. Thanks for reading :)


End file.
